


Under A Sea of Mist

by puddlejumper99



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Big Bang 2018, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mistborn, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Magic, andrew gets to push neil off a roof, but with more magic, honestly this was just an excuse to write magical fight scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-04 08:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15837111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puddlejumper99/pseuds/puddlejumper99
Summary: For a thousand years the Lord Ruler has reigned over the Final Empire. Ash falls from the sky and strange mists shroud the night. The skaa labour in the fields and the nobility dance in their Keeps, their glittering lights blinding them to the cruelty in their hearts.The skaa rebellion is a fantasy and Neil knows it. The Lord Ruler is immortal; there's no overthrowing him. It's as much a surprise to him as anyone else when he gets recruited. But as he gets drawn deeper into the plot, he starts to discover things that will change their understanding of magic forever.There's always another secret.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is insanely self-indulgent in the "literally no one else was asking for this but i wanted it" sort of way
> 
> You shouldnt need to have read the books in order to understand (though if you like fantasy i cant recommend them highly enough) but if anything is weird or confusing drop me a comment and ill try to clarify. theres spoilers in here for all of book one of the Mistborn trilogy, as well as at least one major spoiler for books two and three. if anything in here seems profound or clever, theres a 110% chance i stole it from Brandon Sanderson. 
> 
> because i am anxious and panicky i actually ended up with two fantastic betas, huge thanks to [whenwordsflyoffthepage](http://whenwordsflyoffthepage.tumblr.com/) and [kevindayum](https://kevindayum.tumblr.com/) for wading into this to reassure me that its at least a little coherent. you guys rock. shoutout to our mod [defractum](http://defractum.tumblr.com/) for organizing the whole big bang event. And of course credit to my amazing artist [captain-ferid](http://captain-ferid.tumblr.com/) for creating three gorgeous images to go along with this fic.
> 
> and to the like, four people out there who also exist at the intersection between these two fandoms...this ones for you
> 
> so without further ado...todays episode of How Many Versions Of Andrew Hitting Neil In The Stomach With A Heavy Object Does This Fandom Need? One More, Apparently

Neil kept one ear out for the common room as he carefully packed his few possessions. Boisterous laughter filtered through the thin walls. The crew had just returned from a rather lucrative scam, and the celebration had been going for several hours, and would likely continue for several more. The perfect escape window.

His meagre share of the takings was already tucked under the bottom seam of his battered old travel pack, along with his other bank notes and contacts. He tucked his bedroll on top of his worn and ash-stained clothing and carefully popped up the loose floorboard it had lain on.

He checked again to make sure the room was empty—most of the lesser crewmembers bunked down in this room—and retrieved the small box hidden there. A handful of ash was all it took to disguise his hair, but much more expensive was the bottle of brown dye he used to change his eyes from their natural blue to a less distinctive colour. There was nothing for it; skaa were naturally mousy in colouring, and nothing would mark him as a noble bastard like walking around with his father’s eyes.

He carefully put two drops in each eye and packed the bottle in a bundle of cloth. There was very little else in the box. A handful of forged papers, a pebble for every city he’d ever visited, and the worn brass earring his mother gave him when he was ten years old.

He pocketed the papers and dumped the pebbles into the outer pocket of his pack. After a moment’s hesitation, he put the earring in. It was a simple brass loop, so soft and pliant he could squeeze it closed with no need for a latch. He’d stopped wearing it after his mother died, mostly, after some uncomfortable jibes by a crewmember, but the memory of his mother was wound too tightly to it to get rid of it permanently.

He swung the pack over his shoulders and surveyed his tiny corner to check he had everything. He didn’t feel any guilt for leaving this way; Camon’s crew were low level thieves and scammers, as likely to target skaa merchants as real nobility. Neil’s role had never been much more than playing a servant in the background.

Recently though, he’d noticed Camon keeping him close, insisting he be in the room when scamming particularly important people. Perhaps he’d noticed the pattern, or believed the whispers circulating around the crew. Scams went better with Neil in the room. Neil had no choice but to play along, ever fearful that a mark might look too closely at _him._

No. It was definitely time to go.

He eased out the door and skulked for a moment in the shadows, taking stock of the room. Most of the crew were deep in their cups, flush from their most recent victory. Camon sat at the head of the long table, nearest the door, leaning towards an unfamiliar man in the worn-but-clean clothes of a skaa craftsman.

Neil slunk along the darkest shadows of the wall, drawing only a few glancing looks. He was nearly at the door when—

“Neil!” Camon boomed. “Just the person I was hoping to see. Come take a seat.”

Neil froze, contracting deeper into the shadows. Camon squinted at Neil through the pipe smoke, eyes bleary from drink. They caught on his pack and hung there, narrowing. “Not leaving us, are you?”

“No,” Neil said, tucking his travel pack behind his body.

“Really?” Camon said, rising slowly to his feet, his mouth curling downwards. “‘Cause it looks awfully like you are.”

Neil shook his head, heart pounding as Camon’s voice drew stares from the dozens of thieves filling the room. “I was just going out for food.”

The door was only steps away. He grit his teeth, reaching inside of him for the tiny store of power he had left after the job today. He extended a tendril towards Camon, pushing it against him.

For a second, he thought it worked. Camon’s expression relaxed, becoming a little more trusting, a little less angry. Neil threw everything he had left into the gamble, feeling his tiny reserve rapidly deplete as he leaned on Camon.

He licked his lips to ready another platitude, when it ran out. Camon’s eyes sharpened again. “At this time of night?” he snapped. “Come sit. I have someone here asking for you.”

Panic exploded in Neil’s chest. His eyes jumped to Camon’s guest. He was tall and broad, but otherwise unassuming. He didn’t look like—

Neil bolted.

A shout of surprise chased him, but he ducked a single pair of grasping hands easily and burst into the stairway. His feet scrambled down the steps, leaping the last few to the doorway. A figure shifted in the shadows and he flinched, moving too fast to stop.

A club slammed into his gut, knocking him backwards. He collapsed, lungs seizing,

“Better luck next time,” a bored voice drawled above him.

He wrenched his head up, glaring through his pain at the man in question. He was shorter than Neil, and the cursory smears of ash in his hair didn’t quite disguise the brilliant blonde colouring.

“Bloody hell, Andrew! You better not have broken him!” a voice bellowed down the staircase.

“Give him five,” Andrew said, swinging the club around and resting it on his shoulder. “He’ll be right as rain.”

“You better be right. Let’s get out of here before he makes any more of a scene.” The craftsman thundered down the stairs behind him. Neil clenched his jaw against a groan of pain, his gut roiling and squeezing.

“There is the matter of payment,” Camon’s wheedling voice cut through Neil’s fog.

“Do you own him?” the craftsman demanded. “No? Then you can’t sell him.”

“But I—”

“Take it up with the Lord Ruler. Technically, he owns the lot of us.” The man turned to Neil. “Can you get up, kid?”

Neil jerked his head up. The man’s expression was dark with anger, and for a second Neil was in Kredik Shaw, his father’s furious gaze bent on him.

Strength bloomed like a fire in his stomach, burning away his pain. He scrambled for the door, ducking past Andrew too fast for him to react. He skidded out onto the damp cobblestones, the mists curling around him. Curses echoed into the street, but he sprinted away, his feet sure and fast. The tenement buildings towered around him, casting the street into deep shadow.

He pelted down one alley after another, wending deeper into the warrens of the slums. Even if they could still hear him, between the maze of slums and the echoing mists he should lose them in no time.

His shoulder snapped forward, and pain followed a second later. He cried out involuntarily as second projectile clipped his arm. Blood trailed down his bicep and he lost his step, sliding on the slick stone. Something large and heavy crashed into the side of his head.

Black spots exploded in his vision. His knees gave out, crumpling onto the ground. “ _Kevin,”_ a voice shouted, as if from a great distance. “ _What the hell did you do?”_

He had to run. That was it, right? His thoughts felt swollen, like pus-filled blisters, crowding each other out. His palm pressed against the cobbles, but he couldn’t feel it.

Another voice responded, washing over him like a wave. He just needed to close his eyes, just for a second, and then…

\---

He woke up in a bed.

That was suspicious enough in itself. Neil hadn’t slept in a real bed since—since—he groped for the answer but found it absent. Whether due to the pounding in his head or the fact that he’d simply forgotten, he didn’t know.

“If he dies,” a man’s voice growled, muffled as if it was coming from the next room.

“He’ll be fine. I know how hard I hit him. If he is what you suspect he is, then he won’t even feel it tomorrow.”

“That’s a big ‘if’, Kevin.”

“You saw what he did. He shook off Andrew’s attack too quickly to be natural, and with the reports of his emotional Allomancy—”

“Maybe he’s just tough, have you considered that? He looked terrified out of his goddamned mind.”

“Fascinating as this discussion is,” a voice said, much closer to hand. “It is irrelevant. He’s awake.”

Neil’s breathing froze in his chest. A scramble of footsteps entered the room, followed by a bored, “You can drop the act.”

Neil’s jaw clenched and he opened his eyes a crack, nausea hitting his stomach like a hammer. Three men stood in the doorway to a tiny room, the only furnishings a narrow cot on which Neil lay, a small side table, and a chair against the wall. He couldn’t see any other exits, but he couldn’t tilt his head far enough to see the wall behind him.

“Huh,” the short one—Andrew, his mind supplied—said. “I could’ve sworn your eyes were brown before.”

He flinched and looked down, pinching his eyes shut. He could only tolerate it for a second before he needed to look, fear at what they intended more potent than fear of recognition. The craftsman had his arm out, blocking a third man from charging in. Neil’s eyes skated over his dark hair and fell on the stark black two tattooed on his cheekbone.

His breath left him in a rush. Metal bands constricted around his chest. Impossible. _Impossible._  Kevin Day couldn’t be here. Kevin Day was a relic from a past life, Kevin Day was a hero out of legend.

Kevin Day was _dead._

“He’s losing it, Coach,” Andrew observed, leaning casually against the doorframe.

The craftsman cursed. “Kevin—”

Calm slammed into Neil like a wall. His heart rate slowed and he sagged back into the bed, his breathing evening out. He was safe here. His muscles unlocked, melting into the bed.

 _No_. His brain felt slow as syrup. He wasn’t safe. He twisted his fingers into the blanket, reaching for the panic and clarity he’d felt a moment ago. This was…this was…

This was the same thing he’d done to Camon, only a thousand times more powerful. Neil had never been able to hoard enough power to do more than nudge someone. His chest tightened at the realization, pushing back against the weight that threatened to flatten him against the bed.

“Fuck you,” he managed, glaring out at the trio in the doorway.

Andrew raised a smooth eyebrow. “Well that was unexpected. Kevin, you must be losing your touch.”

The craftsman cursed. “Out, both of you. I’ll deal with him.”

“But Coach—” Kevin argued.

“Out!”

Kevin and Neil flinched simultaneously. He cast one last glance at Neil before turning on his heel and storming out. Andrew met Neil’s gaze and tapped two fingers to his temple in a mocking salute, then turned and followed Kevin. Leaving Neil alone with a man exactly the right age to be his father.

Panic seized him again as the weight lifted with Kevin’s absence. His eyes snapped to the craftsman, tense for a fight he knew he couldn’t win.

The man levelled his gaze at him and moved slowly, leaving the door open and settling in the chair, a few feet away from Neil’s cot. “We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. I’m David Wymack, but this lot mostly calls me Coach. You’re Neil, right?”

Neil kept his mouth shut and stared back at him blankly. He sighed heavily and rubbed his forehead. “Hell. Look, I know you’ve got no reason to trust me, but hear me out.”

“Do I have a choice?” Neil said, voice rough and gravelly with fear-fuelled anger.

The man scowled. “This wasn’t the plan. You weren’t supposed to get hurt.”

“That makes me feel much better, thanks,” Neil spat. “I’m going now.”

He swung his legs off the bed and nearly vomited. The room blurred and he pitched over, clamping a hand over his mouth to contain the nausea. Hands caught his shoulders and he flinched back violently.

“Easy,” Wymack said, hands held up, easing back into his chair. “Easy. You’re in no shape to go anywhere right now.”

Neil dropped his hand to the bedspread, fisting it in the blanket to hold himself upright. He _hated_ head injuries. “Fuck you,” he managed.

“Yeah, we established that already. Here,” he reached for the bedside table and lifted the cup sitting there. “Our healer made this up for you. Drink up. I’m just gonna talk. When I’m done, you can get up and walk out of here a free man. That’s the deal.”

Neil let the cup hang in the air between them. “Why should I listen to anything you say?”

Wymack placed the cup down next to Neil and folded his arms across his chest. “Because I know what you are.”

Neil’s heart seized. “You don’t know shit about me,” he snarled. “If you’re gonna kill me, fine, but don’t try to con me. I know every game in the book.”

“Doesn’t make you any good at playing them,” Wymack shot back. “You ever wonder why Camon kept you on the crew? Why you were always at the forefront of every job, even when more experienced people would’ve made more sense?”

Neil shuttered his expression. He knew why, and but he had no reason to admit that to Wymack. Even if it seemed like there was someone who could do the same things—

“Was that Kevin Day?” he asked. Wymack scowled at his deflection.

“Kevin is officially dead,” he said evenly.

“He didn’t look all that dead to me.”

“I’m not here to talk about Kevin.”

“Tough luck. You want me to listen? That’s my price.”

Wymack tapped his fingers on his hefty biceps and Neil felt faint all over again. The second Wymack remembered how weak and vulnerable Neil was, all this posturing was for nothing. He’d beat the answers he wanted out of him. But if that really was Kevin, and he really was alive, Neil needed to know.

“You know the stories, I presume.”

Neil nodded. Kevin Day was a whisper among the skaa, a tremulous vein of awe that ran among conversations in dark taverns. He’d trained as a hazekiller, a soldier specifically equipped to fight against mythical Mistborn. He was second only to Riko Moriyama, castaway son of Lord Kengo Moriyama.

In the stories, a Mistborn attacked Keep Moriyama, catching them unaware and burning down the wooden servant’s quarters so they were forced to either die in the flames or run into the monster’s waiting blade. Riko and the other hazekillers held back, defending the noblemen, leaving the servants to die. Kevin defied his orders and charged in, slaying the Mistborn and saving the servants.

Neil, of course, knew him for other reasons.

“He killed a Mistborn,” Neil summarized, “and died of his injuries.”

“Close. But, obviously, he didn’t die. Riko Moriyama is an obsessive egoist, so when Kevin outstripped him so publicly, he couldn’t let it stand. He dragged Kevin, wounded, to the Steel Ministry, and revealed the truth. Kevin is half-skaa.”

Neil blinked, his fear forgotten under his shock. “He is?”

“Don’t ask me. Lady Day never married, and Kevin says he doesn’t know who his father is. Riko convinced the obligators that Kevin was a half-breed, and he was sent to the Pits of Hathsin.”

Neil stared at him, mouth open as he worked through that information. “But…nobody ever escapes the Pits.” Another rumour hit him, glaringly obvious, impossibly coincidental. “Are you telling me Kevin Day is the _Survivor of Hathsin._ ”

“The very same,” Wymack said, looking pleased at how quickly Neil put it together.

“How did he escape?”

“Six months in, he Snapped and attacked the guards. He fought his way out and came here, begging for shelter. I knew his mother, when she was alive.”

“So he’s gone mad.”

Wymack waved his hand. “Snapped is a term used for when people come into their Allomantic powers. The powers are latent at first, until a serious traumatic event draws them out. The nobility have their children ritually beaten when they’re eight years old to determine if they have any aptitude. With a skaa kid like you, well. It could’ve happened any time.”

Neil froze all over again. “I’m not—”

“There’s no point lying about it. One of my contacts felt you messing with his emotions a couple weeks back. You’re moderately famous at the moment, in the right circles. I assume that’s why you were making a run for it?”

Neil clenched his jaw. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sure,” Wymack said, leaning back. Boards creaked outside the room and muffled voices shifted rapidly, just out of earshot.

“You haven’t touched your drink,” Wymack noted.

“I don’t drink anything I didn’t prepare myself.”

Wymack reached into his pocket and drew out a small vial, dangling it in the air between them. Some sort of sediment stirred and swirled around, settling in a clump at the bottom. “That’s too bad, because you’re about to drink this mysterious liquid quite willingly.”

“Like hell I am.”

“Look, kid. I know what you are, you know what you are. The way my contact said it, there’s already an obligator sniffing around Camon’s crew. Right now, your options are me or them. I’d advise you pick me.”

“I have no idea who you are or what you want. I’m not doing anything you tell me to.”

Wymack considered him, eyes keen. “I’m with the skaa rebellion.”

A snort of laughter escaped Neil. “Try harder.”

Neil’s expression dropped as Wymack continued to watch him, not a hint of humour in his expression. “You’re not serious,” he said incredulously. “Those idealistic morons?”

“Idealistic morons who just deflected an obligator for you.” He waggled the vial in Neil’s direction. “What do you have to lose? If we’re with the Ministry, you’re already dead.”

“What is it?”

“A mixture of zinc and brass flakes, in an alcohol solution. They’re two of the basic Allomantic metals.”

“Could be poison.”

Wymack shrugged, shaking the vial so the sediment inside swirled around. He popped the cork off and put it to his lips, swallowing a mouthful down in one gulp. He smiled and held the half-empty vial out to Neil, knowing he had him.

Neil stared at the vial like it was death. The skaa rebellion was sheer idiocy. The Lord Ruler was immortal; he’d ruled for a thousand years, and he would rule for thousands more. Even if Wymack was being honest, the skaa rebellion was the last place Neil wanted to end up.

“What do you get, if I am what you think I am?” he found himself asking.

“The satisfaction of knowing I’ve stolen something from the obligators that they desperately want?”

Neil gave him a flat look. Wymack nearly smirked. “Nothing. The chance to offer you a job, if you want. I meant what I said. If this conversation ends and you still want to leave, I will let you go free.”

“Liar,” Neil said, but he took the vial. He sensed he wouldn’t get out of this room without drinking it, one way or another. He stared down at the shimmering contents for a second longer before tossing it back. Sharp flakes slid down his gullet like tiny blades. He twisted his expression at the uncomfortable sensation. “Now what?”

“Can you sense anything?”

“No—”

Neil’s eyes widened involuntarily. He turned his mind inwards, prodding for his store of power. It was vast, a mountain of riches compared to the paltry scraps he’d managed to accumulate before. Wymack leaned forward, expression intent. “You can feel it?”

“Yeah,” Neil breathed, too awed by the fortune within to be wary.

“Try to burn it.”

Neil blinked at him, uncomprehending.

“Burning is the term Allomancers use to describe using their power. Use that on me.”

“You’re insane.”

“Do it anyway.”

Neil reached for the power and directed it at Wymack. It was so easy, so effortless, compared to how much focus he’d needed when his reserves were tiny. A warmth erupted in his stomach, like the heat of a brazier. Burning indeed. He pressed on Wymack, letting his power burn a little hotter in his stomach.

A smile grew across Wymack’s face. “Excellent,” he said. “But we already knew you could do that. Can you sense two different sources?”

Neil frowned and checked his reserve again. At first, he felt only one huge source, but as he prodded at it he could feel a division, like there was another, less familiar source there. Tentatively, he reached for the second and directed it at Wymack the same way, the odd warmth lighting in his gut again as he did.

Wymack leaned back, his smile breaking into a full grin. “That’s it. You did it.”

“What did I do?” Neil asked, sensing the invisible hoards almost reverently.

“Allomancy is incredibly rare, Neil, even among nobility. Among skaa it’s only ever found if there’s noble blood in the last few generations, and then it’s still one in thousands. Those who do inherit it are usually Mistings.”

“So I’m some kind of Misting?”

“No. See, that’s how it works. You either have one power—or you have all of them. We knew you could Soothe emotions, but you just proved you can Riot them too. You’re something much more powerful than a Misting, Neil. You’re Mistborn.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when i started this fic i wrote a note at the top:
> 
> "Ten chapters ONLY. Control ya damn self"
> 
> thankfully, i never specified how long the chapters could be. checkmate, self

The rough blanket scraped across Neil’s oversensitive skin. Wymack had left hours ago, but Neil’s mind was still whirling with information. He should’ve already left. When he’d finally relented and drank the medicine, he’d discovered yet another hoard of power. Wymack said it was pewter, and it enhanced his physical strength. Burning it lightly had made his head stop aching, and by now the tiny impact wounds on his back and arm looked days, not hours, old.

It all seemed too fantastic. _Don’t trust a man who gives you good news,_ his mother cautioned, _it’s the oldest, but easiest, way to con someone._

He scrunched up tighter in the bed. He’d known, sort of, about the Soothing. He couldn’t avoid it, growing up surrounded by nobility. But his mother had somehow hidden the full extent of his powers from not only his father, but him as well. Looking back, the signs were all there. Her urgency, the beatings he’d gotten when he so much as mentioned his abilities, snippets of conversation overheard when she thought he was too young and stupid to understand.

Fear trickled into his stomach. He should listen to her advice. She’d known so much more than him. Wymack left the door unlocked and swore up and down that no one would stop him from leaving. And he would’ve. Except…

Kevin.

Kevin was _alive._

The last time he’d seen Kevin, he was ten years old. He’d been dressed up nicely and brought to Kredik Shaw, where an obligator introduced him to Kevin and Riko. Back then the tattoos on their cheeks had just been ink, Kevin’s smeared a little from his young, sweaty fingers.

Two days later Neil woke up in the night to his mother’s hand clasped over his mouth. Kevin grew up a hero.

Somehow, they both ended up here.

He buried his head under the blanket and groaned something pathetic that had nothing to do with his injuries.

A soft rap on the door preceded a smiling voice. “Hey, new guy? You awake?”

Neil debated pretending to be asleep but decided against it. “What?”

“Hi! Feeling better?”

Neil rolled his eyes and pushed himself upright. The man in the doorway was tall and dark-skinned, dressed in a trim suit with a leafy purple pin in the lapel. Tension immediately seized Neil. The man looked distinctly noble.

“Bloody hell, man. What happened to your face?”

“Nothing.”

“You look like shit,” the man said, grinning and leaning against the doorframe.

“Thanks.”

 “I’m Nicky, by the way. Andrew said your name is Neil?”

“Hm.”

“Don’t be shy, I don’t bite. Not hard, anyway,” he said with a jaunty wink. Neil levelled a blank stare at him and he sighed heavily. “The meeting’s gonna start in a few minutes. Wymack sent me to fetch you.”

“Fine,” Neil said, rolling his shoulder and wincing as the cut there stung. He considered burning a little more pewter, but he had already used half of what Wymack gave him and he didn’t know how much he was going to be able to get in the future. He pushed himself to his feet and nodded at Nicky to get going.

“Uh, are you gonna go like that?”

“What?”

“There’s blood on your shirt,” Nicky pointed out. Neil twisted to look at his arm and cursed. The sleeve was torn, dried a dark, crusty brown.

“Just a second,” he muttered, dragging his travel pack out from under the bed. Wymack had returned it, distinctly apologetic at its dishevelled state, and the first thing Neil had done was renew his eye drops. He tugged a fresh shirt out from the pack and spotted Nicky still standing in the doorway, watching him.

“Turn around,” he said.

“Aw, come on,” Nicky started, eyes mischievous, but Neil had already lost patience. He crossed the room in three strides and shoved the door shut, ignoring Nicky’s yelp as he nearly slammed it on his arm. He spun and leaned backwards against the door, waiting for Nicky to try to barge in. “Neeeeeil,” came the whine from the through the door, but he just shoved the chair under the knob and stripped down to his underclothes.

When he was dressed again he yanked the chair aside and opened the door. Nicky rubbed his arm, looking mournful, but Neil was stone. “Where’s the meeting?”

“You’re not going to make any friends like that, you know,” Nicky pouted.

“I’m not here to make friends.”

“We’re not all bad! Okay, my cousins are terrible, but the rest of us are pretty nice. Usually.”

“What do you do here?” Neil asked. He wasn’t sure how much this noble had to do with Wymack and his team, or how much he knew of what was really going on.

“I’m an informant,” Nicky said, gesturing down the hallway for Neil to walk. He fell in step beside him, keeping his eye out for motion. “Used to do streets, but I’ve been promoted. I look good in a suit, wouldn’t you say?”

Neil made a noncommittal noise, memorizing the layout of the building. “You’re our new twixt, right? We usually use Seth, but I’m the last guy to complain if we’re finally booting him. Has Wymack told you anything about the job yet?

“Not really,” Neil said. Wymack clearly hadn’t shared Neil’s abilities with anyone else yet, and he didn’t mind keeping it secret for now. Let them assume he was a twixt—a go-between for two crews. He’d rather they underestimated him.

“Here we are. Oh, hello Allison, a joy as always.”

“Nice to see you too, fuckface,” a woman’s voice replied. Neil peered through the door and spotted her lounging around a rough worktable. She wore an immaculate red gown, her golden hair in an elaborate braid on top of her head. “Well hello, gorgeous,” she smiled, patting the seat next to her, “You can sit by me.”

Neil couldn’t help but smile. Despite her noble bearing, he instinctively liked her. He crossed the room and joined her, relaxing into his chair. “So, who are you?” she asked.

“He’s our new twixt,” Nicky said immediately, taking the seat across from them.

“We already _have_ a twixt,” she said, waving her bejeweled hand.

“Looks like Coach finally came to his senses.”

“I think the fuck not,” a man’s voice snarled from the doorway. Neil twisted around and saw a tall, burly man in dirty skaa clothes scowling at him from the doorway.

“Looks like you’ve been replaced, darling,” Allison said. “By a newer, prettier model.”

The man shot her a poisonous look and stomped over to the bar in the corner to pour himself a drink. “Splendid idea,” Allison said, “Pour me one, would you?”

“No,” the man said, pointing a threatening finger at her. “Don’t even try.”

“Heartless. I’m sure Neil would get me a drink.”

“Of course, I don’t mind,” Neil said quickly, standing up and hurrying to the bar.

“Allison,” the man ground out.

“Oh _fine,_ ” she said, waving a hand dismissively. Neil stalled next to the bar, blinking. What was he doing? He glanced over towards Allison, who folded her arms across her chest as the newcomer settled smugly into Neil’s vacated chair. Nicky’s hand was over his mouth, unsuccessfully hiding a laughing smile.

The realization struck him like a blow to the gut. “You used Allomancy on me,” he said accusingly.

“Right on the money,” she admitted easily.

Anxiety clawed its way up his throat. “You controlled me.”

“I _encouraged_ you. I simply did it by a slightly unusual method.”

“He raises an interesting point,” Nicky said, lowering his hand, his face still split with an enormous grin. “If he were to, say, profess his undying love for me while under your influence, is it really him or you?”

“That’s not even a question. I can Soothe emotions, I can’t make them appear where they don’t already exist.”

“I don’t care what you can do,” Neil snapped. “Stay out of my head.”

“Don’t act so offended,” she said, and gestured to the bar. “Since you’re already over there…”

Neil inspected his emotions, trying to see if she was manipulating him into bringing her a drink. His skin crawled like someone had just rubbed grubby hands all over him. When Kevin had Soothed him, it had been obvious enough that he could shrug it off. He hadn’t even realized what was happening with Allison.

He left the drinks where they were and sat at the far end of the table, making sure to set himself so he could see the exit this time. There were no windows, but he would have wagered money there was a trapdoor or hidden exit in one of the walls. Every crew hideout he’d been in before had at least one. Other than the small bar, the only thing in the room was a large chalkboard and the two tables, pushed together to make one long one.

“So who the hell is the kid, actually?” the man demanded.

“This is Neil,” Nicky jumped in. “Neil, Seth.”

“What do you do?” Neil asked bluntly.

“Are you deaf? I’m the twixt.”

“I meant what—” he gestured to Allison in clarification, “What _can_ you do?”

“Oh, Seth and I are just plain old skaa,” Nicky said. “No magical abilities here.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Suspicious, isn’t he?” Allison said. “I like him. Most crumbs are too scared to even talk around Mistings.”

Nicky must have caught his confused expression, because he explained. “Crumb is a word some of the more uppity members of the underworld use to describe people who belong to the lesser thieving crews. No offense.”

Neil shrugged it off. He scanned the room, trying to spot where the hidden exit would be, while the other three bickered about what qualified as a crumb.

He was the first to spot the next arrivals. A man and a woman sauntered in, wearing matching sleeveless vests and skaa trousers. Both had strong, beefy arms, though the man was nearly a foot taller.

“Hey team!” the man said brightly, dropping into a chair next Seth. The woman settled next to him.

“You must be Neil,” she said, leaning forward and offering her hand over the table. Neil shook reluctantly, wary of any further manipulations. “I’m Dan, Wymack’s second in command. This is my husband, Matt.”

“Andrew do that to you?” Matt asked, gesturing to Neil’s face.

“No,” Neil said shortly.

Matt sighed, looking around at the assembled group. “What did you guys do?”

“Nothing,” Allison said loftily, running her hand up Seth’s thigh. He shot a haughty look at Neil before she dragged his attention back round with a fingernail under his chin.

“Sure, the new guy looks like he might punch someone out because you were civil. Can’t you play nice for ten freaking seconds?”

“I _was_ nice,” Allison said. “I made him feel exceedingly welcome. Take it up with these two.”

“You Soothed him, didn’t you,” Dan cursed. “You can’t just force everyone to do what you want.”

“I didn’t _force_ him to do anything. I just gave him a little nudge.”

“He’s one of us now, so the normal rules apply. No using Allomancy on crew members.”

“Whatever you say, second in command.”

Dan scowled and turned back to Neil. “Sorry about these clowns. I’d say they’re normally better behaved, but I’d be lying.”

“What do you do?” Neil asked, again. He wasn’t interested in playing games.

“I’m a pewterarm, so is Matt.”

“So you…” He paused, unwilling to give away his vague understanding of how pewter worked.

“They can make themselves stronger.” Allison supplied. “They hit things—particularly people—who get in our way.”

“Well yes,” Dan said, “That’s part of it. But we also provide security for the team and organize strike forces when necessary. Two pewterarms are worth a couple dozen regular soldiers. We’re stronger, we can last longer, and we can survive worse wounds, but we’re not invincible. And we can’t play with your emotions.”

“Good to know,” Neil said, somewhat honestly. Two super-soldiers were definitely something to be concerned about, but he had pewter too, which levelled the playing field, and he didn’t need to outfight them. He just had to outrun them.

Before anyone else could get any questions out, Wymack came thumping through the doorway, Kevin and Andrew on his heels. And—another Andrew? What the hell. His gaze jumped between them. Wymack wore the same craftsman clothes he had earlier, but the other three had scrubbed up and dressed in semi-formal noble attire. One twin wore black down to his collared shirt, while the other wore dark blue, their blond hair washed and bright. Kevin wore his suit naturally, arrogance bleeding off him like sweat.

The blue twin settled in the seat next to Nicky, Kevin beside him, which left the black-clad twin to lean over Neil. “You’re in my seat.”

“Funny,” Neil said, “I didn’t see your name on it.”

“Perhaps you need to get your _eyes_ checked,” he said, and Neil stiffened at the pointed look in his eyes. This one was Andrew, the one who’d seen his blue eyes. He was sure of it.

“Just sit somewhere else,” Wymack told Andrew, scowling as he took up post next to the chalkboard.

“It’s fine,” Neil muttered, getting out of his seat and edging around Wymack to sit beside Dan. Andrew settled into the seat across from him, leaning back and tapping his thumb idly on the table. He didn’t take his eyes off Neil, his expression revealing nothing.

“Alright,” Wymack said, “This lot introduce themselves?”

Neil nodded when he realized the question was directed at him.

“Excellent. You might remember Andrew and Kevin, and that’s Aaron. Who are we missing?”

“Just Renee,” Dan said.

“She’s on a job, I’ve already talked to her. Let’s get started.”

“Let me guess,” Nicky said. “You’re planning a job. It’s a big one, since it’s the first where we have a Mistborn on the team. You’ve kept it suitably secretive, and we’re all dying to know. Spit it out.”

“Shut your mouth. I’m getting to it. Yes, this is a big job. The biggest we’ve ever attempted. And it’s going to be incredibly dangerous, and I need you to take this seriously. The skaa rebellion has never had an opportunity like this, with so many Allomancers allied to our cause.”

“Spare us the dramatics,” Allison said lazily.

“I said shut your mouth. The rebellion didn’t believe me when I said this project was worth it. They thought I was crazy when I said I was going to start collecting and protecting half-skaa Mistings and put together a team. And they sure as hell didn’t think it would come to anything when they met your sorry asses. But we’re going to prove them all wrong.

“We’re going to overthrow the Lord Ruler.”

A pin could’ve dropped in the silence that followed.

Abruptly, Allison laughed. “You’re mad. You’ve finally lost it. I always said you would, but it’s finally happened.”

“I am dead serious,” Wymack said, not a trace of humour in his expression.

“I hate to sound the pessimist,” Nicky said. “But she’s right. The Lord Ruler is the Sliver of Infinity. A Piece of God himself. He’s _a thousand years old._ Even if we conceivably could overthrow him, he’d just overthrow us right back. He has all the time in the world.”

“Not our problem. The skaa rebellion has agreed that the time to strike is now. Our job is to deliver them an army and an opening to take the city. Once they have it, it’s their job to hang on to it. This was always the goal. The timeline has just moved up. Because of him.”

He gestured to Kevin. His expression was the mirror image of Wymack’s grim one.

“One Mistborn isn’t going to tip the balance,” Allison said. “The nobility have half a dozen just that we know of, and probably another dozen hiding in the wings. Plus the Inquisitors, the entire Steel Ministry, and a veritable army of Mistings.”

“We’ve got a plan to deal with that. We’ve got access to some information that allows us to be a lot more precise in our attack. But the gist of the plan is this: we need to rustle up an army, get the Garrison out of the city to leave it undefended, and take the palace.”

“That’s all well and good,” Allison said. “But it doesn’t answer the question of how we’re going to deal with a literal immortal being. I’m all for bringing the nobility to their knees and reforming the plantation system. But the Lord Ruler…”

“Is just one man,” Wymack said firmly. “He can’t fight an army alone. If we strip him of the Garrison and the nobility, he’s vulnerable. We break into the palace and we throw him in the dungeon, or we strike while he’s out of the city. The system breaks down if he can’t pay his soldiers, and if we have access to the treasury he’s reduced to being a single powerful Mistborn. Even a Mistborn can’t capture a city alone.

“We have a plan. You’ll all get input, obviously, but this is  _not_ an impulse move. We’ve been planning this for years. All I need to know now is if you’re in. I don’t want anyone on this team who isn’t one hundred percent committed. We have a chance here to do something great, something no one has ever done before. The question is, will you be part of it?”

A deathly silence took the room. Neil kept his face neutral, covertly studying the others. There was a mix of all sorts of reactions there, but what startled him the most was that they seemed…sincere. They didn’t really believe this hare-brained scheme could work, did they?

Dan spoke first. “You know I’ll go along with whatever job you plan, Coach. Just tell me. Are you sure?”

Wymack nodded. “Alright,” she said, lifting her chin. “Then I’m in.”

“Me too,” Matt said, looking at his wife. “Where you go, I go.”

Dan caught his hand and squeezed it, giving him a grateful look.

“Kevin?” Wymack prompted.

Kevin gave him a scornful look. “Clearly.”

“Andrew?” Nicky said. “You’re going along with this?

He leaned forward to study Andrew, who sat next to Kevin in stubborn silence. His eyes slid slowly over to Nicky, his expression still blank, but Nicky cursed. “You knew. You knew this was the plan and you didn’t even tell me? What the hell Andrew? I thought we were family?”

Andrew shrugged him off, though Aaron was now staring at him, intense and unreadable. Nicky cursed again. “Fine. I’m in. If you’ve got Andrew, we might even have a chance.”

“What the fuck?” Seth snapped. “You can’t be serious. You’re gonna get killed. The Ministry will hang us all by hooks through our throats.”

“Could do,” Wymack said. “But think of what we could achieve.”

“No. No fucking way. I’m not getting martyred for you. Come on Allison, let’s get out of here.”

He stood, grabbing Allison’s arm, but she didn’t move. “Allison,” he growled. “What are you doing?”

She pulled out of his grasp, leaning back in her seat, expression calm.

“No,” he said, “You’re not. They’ll kill you. You’re not going along with this.”

“What can I say?” she said. “I appreciate a challenge. Now sit down and stop making a scene.”

Seth’s face twisted in rage, his fists clenching at his sides. “You…”

“You dragged me into this,” she said, raising her chin defiantly. “You don’t get to complain if I’ve got bigger balls than you do.”

“This is insanity! You really want to die for this?”

“I want to fight for this.”

Seth made a sound like an angry dog, but it was Wymack who interrupted. “The lady’s made her choice, Seth.”

Seth stared around the room, dark and poisonous. “You are a bunch of delusional idiots,” he snarled. “You’re going to get yourselves and everyone else killed. I hope you die miserably.”

He grabbed his coat from the back of his chair and stalked out of the room. The door slammed behind him, rattling in its frame.

“Well,” Dan said. “Guess we need a new twixt.”

“Good thing Coach picked up Neil,” Nicky said.

“Neil’s something more of a new recruit,” Wymack corrected. “We caught him Soothing a few weeks back.”

“Another Soother?” Allison said, shaking off Seth’s departure with false lightness. “Can never have enough of us, can you?”

“Actually, it turns out he can Riot emotions as well.”

Neil held himself rigid as all eyes turned to him, suddenly curious.

“Oh,” Nicky said. “Lord Ruler, he’s Mistborn?”

Wymack nodded. “I tested him earlier myself.”

“Damn, Neil. Why’d you say you were a twixt?”

“I didn’t,” Neil said. “You assumed.”

“Two Mistborn on the team,” Dan mused. “We might even stand a fighting chance.”

“So, what do you say, Neil? Yes or no?”

Wymack met Neil’s gaze, ignoring the rest of the crew. Neil clenched his jaw and looked away. This was stupid and suicidal and he knew it. He’d stood in front of the Lord Ruler, he knew what these fools obviously didn’t. You didn’t fight the Lord Ruler. He wasn’t a person, he was a force of nature. You could no more stop the ash from falling or fight the mists themselves.

His eyes slid inexorably to Kevin. There was no glint of recognition in his eyes, but Neil would’ve been shocked if there was. You didn’t look for an obligator’s son in a den of thieves. Despite what Wymack said, it was likely that if Kevin was going along with this he’d gone mad. Kevin knew better than anyone what the punishment for crossing the Lord Ruler was.

Neil swallowed hard. He couldn’t leave. Not until he knew the truth. “He’s right,” Neil said. “Chances are we’re all going to die.”

“We?” Wymack asked knowingly, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Neil said, looking away. “Guess I’m in.”

“Excellent,” Wymack said, clapping his hands so loudly everyone jumped. “Full planning meeting will be tomorrow. Yeden’s going to be there, so by the Lord Ruler please try and act professional. Any and all questions can wait till then. Now clear the hell out.”

There was some soft grumbling as the crew stood, but it faded into quiet chatter as they dispersed. Neil retreated to his room, intending to sleep off the last of his headache. He dragged the chair over to the door and rammed it under the doorknob and tested it a couple times. Someone determined would break it down, but he’d at least have warning.

He turned back to his bag to check if anything had been stolen when it was searched, and a knock sounded at the door.

His teeth ground together. Wasn’t it enough he’d thrown in with these lunatics? They couldn’t even let him sleep.

The knock persisted and he gave up, shunting the chair aside and hauling the door open. He scowled down at Andrew, who didn’t have the decency to look contrite.

“Kevin wants you,” he said, and Neil was at least gratified that he had to look up to meet Neil’s gaze. He’d changed out of his suit into something more discreet, a skaa tunic and trousers that were worn and faded but not too badly stained with ash.

“What are you, his messenger boy? Tell him to find me himself.”

“I’m not his messenger,” Andrew said, stepping into Neil’s space. Neil retreated into the room and immediately regretted it as Andrew made himself comfortable in the doorway, blocking the exit. “I’m your first test.”

Neil shifted his stance, reaching for his small reserve of pewter. “What kind of test?”

“Wymack is inclined to trust you, but he is notoriously soft on charity cases. So it falls to me. You’re going to tell me why you’re here, and if I don’t like your answer—” He reached into his sleeve and with a snick, drew a dagger. Neil flinched back, his mind caught on the edge of the blade. It was made of obsidian, jet black stone shimmering in the dim light.

“Tell me, _Neil,_ if that’s even your name. Why are you here? It’s not because you buy that optimistic garbage. I saw you staring at Kevin.”

“He’s a legend,” Neil said, gaze still fixed on the blade.

Andrew’s eyes glittered. “Not good enough. Why’s a rabbit like you suddenly digging in his heels?”

“I’ve always been hunted for what I am.”

“So you knew?”

“I knew about the Soothing. Not the rest of it.”

“Now you know. And yet you’re willing to throw it all away on a mad plot to depose an unkillable god.”

“Seems better than wallowing in a thieving crew until the Ministry catches me.”

Andrew tutted and reached out, tapping the blade against Neil’s collarbone. “How disappointing. The rabbit lies.”

Neil opened his mouth to argue, but Andrew surged forward, his expression twisting in anger. Neil gasped as Andrew slammed him against the wall, knife at his throat.

Belatedly, he remembered pewter.

“The next thing out of your mouth better be the truth, or I will open your throat and leave your body for the mistwraiths.”

Neil could barely breath, the too-familiar feeling of a blade against his skin scattering his mind. “Kevin,” he gasped. “He can teach me. That’s why I agreed.”

“Better,” Andrew murmured, easing back, knife still in hand. “Keep talking.”

Neil raised a shaking hand to his neck, stalling for time. He had half a story prepared, but he didn’t think it would satisfy Andrew as it had his old crewmates.

“I met him once,” he said. “When we were young. I’m a bastard, but my mother kept her skaa heritage a secret, so I was raised noble. When the Ministry found her out they came for us. I got away, but she—”

He cut off, grief and betrayal rising in his throat, more real than he wanted to admit. His mother hadn’t been skaa, nor had she died. But she’d always promised him. _Anyone will betray you, Neil. Even me._

He hadn’t believed her, which was why she’d had to go. Abandoning him in a thieving crew a year ago with only her debts to keep him company.

“I can’t help think it would’ve been different,” he said finally. “If I knew my powers. If I could have saved her.” _If I had been worth staying for._

“You were a child,” Andrew said. “You never would have saved her.”

It was a callous statement, but oddly it felt soothing. A cold truth. Andrew’s eyes were dark, but calm.

“Fine,” Andrew said when Neil couldn’t muster a reply. “You can stay. Come.”

Neil stood frozen for a second. He couldn’t believe the lie had worked. It was one his mother had used when he was young, before Neil learned to shake his noble accent and speak like a skaa child. Somehow, however, he didn’t think it was the story that convinced Andrew.

He shook that thought and hurried out into the hall to follow Andrew. They descended the stairs to where an impatient Kevin Day stood, wearing similar clothing to Andrew, a pack slung over one shoulder. “What took so long?” he demanded.

“Getting to know each other,” Andrew said blithely, shoving Kevin out the door. Neil slipped out behind them and closed the door, emerging into a soot-stained alley. Kevin shook Andrew off and strode down the cobbles, apparently confident Neil would follow. Surprisingly, so did Andrew. It was obvious from Nicky’s comments in the meeting that Kevin and Andrew came as a pair. Equally obvious was that Andrew was no Mistborn. What Kevin needed from him Neil didn’t know.

Neil slunk down the street, instincts screaming to keep to the sides, to the alleys, but Andrew and Kevin walked into the main road and down the centre of the street with thoughtless confidence. Neil swallowed his fear and followed them.

The mists of the night curled around them, muffling the city and making it seem like they were in a tiny, isolated bubble. The streets were heaped with ash. Cleaning crews would whisk it away in the morning, but it would return by nightfall. Most skaa learned to live ash-stained and dirty. Only the nobility could afford the frivolity of regular washing. Clean clothes stood out on the street, marked them apart.

Kevin stopped suddenly at an intersection. “That’s far enough,” he announced, and dropped his pack, rummaging through until he pulled out a bundle of loose cloth.

He shook it out and Neil stared. It resembled a cloak, but its colours were mottled grey and black. More striking, it was in tatters. Long strips lay over each other, bound together at the neck. Kevin slung it over his shoulders and fastened it. It flowed around him, the falling strips wafting in the breeze.

“What is that?” Neil asked, staring at the strange garment in awe.

“A mistcloak,” Kevin said. “It is a symbol of what we are. Only Mistborn are allowed to wear them. Here.”

He thrust a second bundle into Neil’s hand and he started. The mistcloak unravelled, strips fluttering around him. “Why are you giving this to me?”

Kevin made an impatient noise and Neil managed to dredge up a scowl for him. “Because it is what you are. Also, it is a message to any who see us. Most Mistborn are high nobility, and any patrols who see us will presume as such and leave us be.”

Neil mulled that over and wrapped the cloak around his shoulders. A band held the strips secure around his chest, so it completely enveloped him.

“The first thing you must unlearn is fear,” Kevin said, striding away down the street. Neil followed, barely aware of Andrew’s silent presence. “Thieves and soldiers learn to tolerate the mists, but none are comfortable in them. The mists are _ours._ They are attracted to the burning of metals. Any Misting will witness it if they use Allomancy at night, but only Mistborn truly belong to the mists. The sooner you become accustomed to them the better.”

Neil nodded, still trying to adjust to the weight of the mistcloak on his shoulders. This lesson, at least, was easy. He and his mother had often used the mists as cover. They felt safe to him, obscuring. Learning to walk openly down the street would be harder than hiding in the mists.

He was so distracted he didn’t realize where they were until the buildings opened up around him into a massive square. Kevin stopped next to a tall tenement building. Deep in the square he could just make out the outline of a statue, many times the height of a man. He couldn’t see the details in the mist, but he recognized it anyway. The Lord Ruler, his fist upraised to the sky, feet in a fountain at his base.

“What do you know of Allomancy?”

Neil tore his eyes away from the distant fountain. “Wymack said there are eight basic metals.” Implying there were other, less common ones.

Kevin nodded. “Four physical metals, four mental metals. There are also two temporal metals, but we’ll start with the bottom eight. Which have you burnt so far?”

“Pewter, brass and…the other emotional one.”

“Zinc, for Rioting emotions. We’ll leave those two for another day. Here.”

He handed Neil a vial much like the one Wymack gave him earlier, though the fluttering metal flakes shimmered with more colours. Neil grimaced, popping the cork and swallowing it down.

“Burn pewter.”

Neil reached inside and paused. A wealth of power bloomed in his stomach, but he could feel multiple varieties. Eight, he counted. Which was pewter?

Panic clawed at him. This was a test, and he was going to fail. He couldn’t even identify his metals.

Still, a few felt faintly familiar. He prodded at them and hazarded a guess, burning one.

He immediately knew it was right. His aches and tiredness retreated, his muscles stronger and more alert. The cold seemed less consequential. He nodded to Kevin, stifling a triumphant smile. Kevin’s dour expression didn’t lift.

“Now look at the other metals. There should be one linked with pewter.”

“I see it.”

“Burn it.”

The world brightened around Neil. The mists swirled around him, ever-present, but his gaze penetrated them easily. “Tin,” Kevin said, and Neil flinched at how loud he sounded. “It enhances your senses. It’s also one of the slowest burning metals—if you burn it at the same time as pewter, it will last almost twice as long.”

He fell silent and Neil gazed around, stunned at how the world opened up. The mists played, translucent, over a city of dark, looming buildings. Distantly, he could see the hulking shadow of Kredik Shaw. The Lord Ruler’s palace, a massive building prickling with dozens of spires, like a squad of soldiers wielding spears.

His eyes tugged away from the sight, drawn by something very strange. Tiny specks of light glittered in the sky, impossibly far away.

“Stars,” Kevin said, following Neil’s gaze and tipping his head upwards. “Most people never see them through the mists.”

Neil stared for a long moment, reverent. The mists came out every night without fail, and Neil had been among them countless times. It had never occurred to him to look upwards.

At a sudden thought, he glanced at Andrew. He’d settled on a ledge with a pipe in hand, ignoring the two Mistborn. Neil looked back at the sky, extinguishing tin, and the mists deepened, flowing impenetrably across the sky. Unless Andrew was a tin Misting, this was what he saw them staring at.

“Try another metal,” Kevin said, tiring of Neil’s gawking. He selected another at random, but other than a now-familiar warm sensation in his stomach, nothing happened.

“Copper,” Kevin said with a knowing nod. “Extinguish it and burn its pair.”

Neil did so, and immediately felt a curious vibration washing over him, like a ripple or a heartbeat. After a moment, he was able to pinpoint the source. He frowned at Kevin, feeling the soft vibrations leading to him.

“Bronze is the Seeking metal. It allows you to sense when someone nearby is using Allomancy. It’s one of the primary tools the Ministry uses to catch skaa Mistings. Allomantic pulses in the skaa district are a sure sign of illicit activity.”

Abruptly, the vibrations ceased. “What did you do?” Neil asked.

“I burned copper. Copper hides you from Seekers and allows anyone near you to use Allomancy without detection in a radius called a coppercloud. Wymack always keeps a coppercloud going at the hideout, so we don’t need to fear Seekers. Andrew is one of our Smokers, and several of the apprentices at the workshop downstairs are as well.”

Neil nodded, releasing bronze and lighting his copper. “That seems useful.”

“It is. Most Mistborn keep copper burning at all times; it lasts nearly as long as tin. It also prevents you from being affected by emotional Allomancy, though that effect is limited to you.”

Neil perked up at that. Shielding himself from Allison’s manipulations was nearly as appealing as hiding from the Ministry.

“Finally, steel and iron. While we’ll train more with all the metals, these two will be your first focus and strongest weapons. Burn one of them.”

Neil picked one of the final pair and jumped. Blue lines burst from his chest, arcing out towards dozens of objects. Some were thick and bright, others faint and thin as spiderweb. He passed his hand through them, but they were insubstantial as smoke.

Kevin flipped a penny out of his coin pouch and held it out. One of the blue lines was fixed to it, more chasing the coin pouch. “Try to single out this coin.”

Neil shot him a quick glance and sifted mentally through the mess of lines until he felt the one leading to the coin. Hesitantly, he poked at it, and was startled when the coin skittered away and hit Kevin in the chest.

Kevin caught it easily. “What did I just do?” Neil asked, staring at his hands. He hadn’t touched the coin, but he’d moved it somehow. “Does it let you control things?”

He poked at the blue line again, trying to spin the coin, but it jumped away again. Kevin snatched it and closed his fist, obscuring the blue line. “Not precisely. Steel allows you to push on a bit of metal, sending it away from you. Iron does the opposite.” He placed the coin in Neil’s hand. “You can’t move things around with your mind. Forces work in straight lines, towards or away from you. Shoot the coin towards the statue.”

Neil held the coin up and pushed against the blue line again. It shot away, arcing till it hit the ground. He kept Pushing for a second, then released it, letting it plink against the fountain.

“Bring it back.”

Neil frowned in concentration, burning the final metal. The blue lines appeared again, and he tugged against the slender line still connecting the coin to his chest. It leapt towards him, flying through the air until he had to jump aside.

“Good. Now pull the statue to us.”

_“What?”_

“I will not ask twice.”

Neil shook his head. This was absurd. He burnt iron, fixing on the thick blue line connected to the statue.

Tentatively, he tugged against it.

He lurched forward like someone had dug a hook into his chest and yanked. He yelped, releasing his hold on the statue, but momentum carried him forward and he tumbled to the ground in a heap.

He scrambled to his feet, heart pounding. “What the hell?” he demanded, then caught the faint hint of amusement on Kevin’s face. “You knew that would happen.”

“Obviously,” Kevin said. “Steel-pushing and Iron-pulling use your own weight. You Pulled against the statue, and since you’re not heavy enough to draw it towards you, you had to move. If you Push something small like a coin, it moves away from you. If you Push something closer to your weight, both of you move. It’s not a one-way street.”

“Great,” Neil muttered, brushing his mistcloak, which was shedding ash from his tumble.

“Put this on,” Kevin said, holding out a belt ringed with metal weights. “If you do anything foolish, I should be able to correct you with this.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Neil snapped, holding the heavy belt in one hand and fuming at the condescension in Kevin’s tone. The trick with the statue was one blow to his pride too many.

“Confidence is earned, not given,” Kevin said, voice icy.

“Sorry not all of us got spoon-fed Allomancy as a child. I guess growing up with a golden spear up your ass just makes you better than the rest of us, doesn’t it?”

“If you were a noble, you would have been training since childhood. You are eons behind where you need to be, and every Mistborn you encounter will take advantage of it. Either decide to improve or leave. Do not waste my time if you are not willing to put in the effort.”

That stung, but Neil was angry now, spitting fire. “You’re nothing but a pampered lordling. Wymack told me what it takes to Snap an Allomancer. How did it take you this long, hm? Did they think you were too fragile to survive the beating?”

“The Moriyama’s would rather kill a child than lose a potential Allomancer,” Kevin retorted, then paused. “I…don’t know why I didn’t Snap then. But do not presume just because you are skaa you have a monopoly on suffering.”

Neil’s curiosity flared, but there would be other opportunities to probe Kevin’s past. For now, it was enough to confirm that Kevin truly didn’t recognize him.

He dropped the belt on the ground, petulance overriding common sense. “So what would you have me practice, _your lordship?_ ”

Kevin ignored that cheap dig and pointed at the building beside them. “We’re going up there.”

That stole Neil’s momentum. The building was four storeys high, the windows shuttered against the mists. Kevin held out his hand and the dropped coin zipped into his palm. He caught it and dropped it between his feet. He shot a glance at Neil, and he thought he saw that spark of amusement in his eyes again before he shot upwards into the mists.

Neil yelped, scrambling back a step. Andrew heaved an irritated sigh and pried himself off the ledge, setting off around the side of the building.

Neil didn’t follow. He stared at the tiny coin suspiciously.

Kevin didn’t return and Neil grit his teeth. This job was going to get him killed long before the Ministry caught up to them. He positioned himself above the coin, one foot on either side, and before he could completely panic, Pushed against it.

He was thrown into the air like he’d been punched. He kept Pushing against the coin, desperately aware that it was the only barrier between himself and falling. The line trailed behind him, growing thinner and weaker with distance. He slowed in the air until he came to a stop, hovering in the swirling mists, Pushing against the coin beneath him just to stay airborne.

“I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” Kevin said, and Neil’s eyes shot over to him. He stood a few feet away, watching Neil hanging in midair.

Neil scowled and leaned towards him. For a moment he was terrified he’d made a horrible mistake, then he tipped over like an unbalanced weight, swinging over to crash onto the rooftop in an ungainly heap.

He rolled onto his back, revelling in the rough solidity of tile beneath his body. “Up,” Kevin said, and Neil glared up at him. He took another moment to catch his breath before slowly standing, curling his bare toes against the flat rooftop.

A soft click made Neil twitch, but it was just Andrew, climbing through an access door. “Why is he here?” Neil asked, “We don’t need a Smoker.”

“He goes where I go,” Kevin said, his tone clearly dismissive.

Neil ignored that. “It seems kind of limiting if he can’t follow our jumps.”

“It is non-negotiable.”

“What could he possibly offer you? We can do everything he does and more.”

Andrew tapped his pipe, blowing a smoke ring towards Neil. “Wouldn’t want Kevin’s demons to come out to play, would you?”

“You’re not here out of compassion.”

“An astute observation.”

“Enough,” Kevin snapped. “He stays.”

Andrew tapped two fingers against his temple in a mocking salute and crossed to stand next to the edge, seemingly indifferent to the mortal drop. Neil had the uneasy feeling that wasn’t the end of it, but he followed Kevin to the edge.

Kevin held his hand out and Neil heard a scraping sound below before the belt flipped up into his hand. He offered it to Neil, who shook his head. “What next?” he asked warily.

“You go back down.” Kevin said. “While it is possible to vary the strength of a Push, it is difficult. It’s easiest to just drop, Push once or twice to slow yourself, and use pewter to land.” He held the belt out again. “Care to reconsider?”

Neil was pretty sure he would be stupid not to, but he was too stubborn to back down now. He ignored the belt and said, “So you want me to jump off the roof?”

“Yes.”

Neil peered over the side. His steel-lines revealed the penny, too small to see even with tin. His stomach twisted, the image of his body mangled and broken on the cobbles rising unbidden in his mind. “You’re insane.”

He met Kevin’s eyes again before leaning over to stare down into the mists, fear an uncomfortable mass in his throat.

A hand on his back was his only warning, and then Andrew shoved. He let out a strangled cry as he plunged into open air.

He twisted, Pushing off the coin frantically, but he wasn’t directly above it and he went lurching upwards and sideways, away from the coin. He started to drop again, and in desperation tried to Pull himself towards the coin.

It zipped up into the air towards him.

That’s it, he thought. I’m dead. The ground rushed towards him and he snatched for the coin, his fingers closing around the cold metal and holding it out in front of him.

He Pushed it downwards with his last coherent thought. He lurched, slowing, and crashed into the ground hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. He sprawled across the ground, stunned.

A soft thump from beside him prompted him to roll over onto his back. He groaned at the ache all over his body and stared up at Kevin’s pitiless expression.

“I’m going to kill him,” he croaked.

“If he hadn’t pushed you, I would have,” Kevin said calmly. “Would you have jumped otherwise?”

“Yes,” Neil muttered mutinously.

Kevin shrugged. “Get up. Your training isn’t done yet. And I told you to burn pewter.”

Neil scowled, though pewter did chase away the worst of the pain. He rolled to his feet, assessing the damage. Nothing broken, though his whole side would be bruised tomorrow.

Kevin dropped a coin and shot back up into the mists. “Asshole,” Neil muttered. After a moment, he followed.


	3. Chapter 3

“Neeeeeeil,” a wheedling voice whined outside his door.

Neil groaned and rolled over, covering his face with his pillow. Every bone in his body ached and it felt like he had barely fallen into his cot before Nicky was knocking at his door and calling to him in that insufferably perky voice. “What?”

“It’s time for the meeting! I brought snacks!”

Neil grumbled into his pillow for a long moment before rolling out of bed, wishing he had a little pewter to take the edge off his soreness. “Just a minute.”

Nicky chattered away behind the door and Neil listened with half an ear, though none of it seemed like it was useful information. He dug a fresh shirt out of his bag and swapped it. His trousers were covered in ash from their late night Allomancy practice, but they were always a little ashy, so he just dusted them off and pulled the door open.

Only his reflexes saved him from being hit in the face. He caught the projectile instinctively and dodged back, ready for a fight.

Nicky laughed, “Relax! It’s for you. Come on, meeting is this way.”

Neil looked down at the round, yellowish fruit in his hand suspiciously. Living as he had, he’d rarely had a chance to eat nice foods. Usually he just stole a few food tokens and lined up with the factory skaa, enduring the thin, tasteless gruel the rest of them did. Some of the more successful crew members stole or purchased fruit and meats, but Neil gutted it out with the lesser members. Better than being conspicuous.

He bit into the crisp flesh and ambled after Nicky. They headed for the same room as yesterday, which was nearly full. Neil took a quick headcount and saw they were only missing Wymack. “I come bearing gifts!” Nicky announced, placing a basket of fruit on the table with a flourish.

Everyone dove in like wild dogs, giving Neil a chance to nab a chair at the end of the table without drawing much attention. Matt turned to him with a welcoming smile. “Hey! I was starting to worry you weren’t going to come back.”

“Nah,” Nicky said, settling in beside Neil. “I just let him sleep in. Figured he’d need it after being out all night practicing with Kevin.”

Matt winced in sympathy. “Ouch. How was that?”

“Fine,” Neil said.

“I don’t envy you. I mean, being Mistborn must be amazing, but training with Kevin?” Matt shuddered. “I’d rather get sent to the Pits.”

Neil snuck a glance at Kevin, seated at the far end of the table looking clear-headed and unruffled by lack of sleep. He and Andrew were wearing noblemen’s suits again, Andrew’s hair gleaming and impossibly clean. Neil buried the urge to run his hands through his own hair, tangled and blackened with ash.

“It’s not terrible,” he said when he realized Matt was still waiting for an answer.

“You don’t have to be nice,” Matt said, grinning crookedly. “We’ve all worked with Kevin before.”

Wymack pounded on the door, getting everyone’s attention. “Alright you lot, settle down. Everyone here? Excellent.” He gestured behind him at a short, nondescript skaa man. “This is Yeden, you may have heard of him. He’s going to be our new employer.”

Neil studied the man more closely, but he was dressed in simple trousers, and his face was darkened with ash, like any normal factory skaa. It made him stand out in this room, where everyone else was oddly clean.

“Yeden,” Dan said, standing up and offering her hand. “A pleasure.”

“I’m sure,” Yeden said, voice sour. “This is your team, David? A bunch of foppish youths dressed like nobles? I am becoming less and less confident in this plan by the minute.”

“I can already see this job is going to be great for crew morale,” Nicky said, kicking his feet up onto the table in a most foppish manner. He turned his head to Neil and said loudly, “Yeden doesn’t like us because he paid for our training but we managed to pay him back doing thieving work, so he can’t control us. It’s hard being competent, but what can you do? It’s not like the skaa rebellion was achieving anything in that time.”

“Shut it, Hemmick,” Wymack said, and waved Yeden through the door, revealing the person standing behind him.

Neil reacted without thinking, knocking his chair over as he leapt backwards. The woman held up her hands placatingly, but panic had control over Neil now. Swirling and spiking around her eyes were the black tattoos of the Steel Ministry. An obligator, one of the Lord Ruler’s priests.

“Neil!” someone shouted, but he was already running for the bolt hole, until several hands caught and restrained him. He struggled against them, but there were too many. “Shit,” someone grunted, and then he was slammed against the wall, held down. “Neil, breathe, it’s okay. She’s one of us.”

Neil clenched his teeth and wrenched against the restraining hands but couldn’t get free. What he wouldn’t do for some pewter right now.

“Bloody hell,” Wymack said, out of sight. “Did no one think to warn him?”

“Sorry, Coach,” Nicky panted next to Neil’s ear. “It didn’t come up. Lord Ruler, Neil, you’re stronger than you look.”

“Let go of me,” Neil snarled.

“Only if you promise not to run,” Nicky said, almost apologetically.

“You bring one of them in here—”

“It’s fine,” a soft voice cut over the noise. “I understand his trepidation. Please release him, and perhaps we can have this conversation without any antagonism.”

Nicky looked skeptical, but he stepped back, as did Matt and Dan. Neil immediately dashed to the entrance of the bolthole. “Neil,” Nicky protested, hands outstretched, but Neil stopped, hand against the latch that would open the secret door.

“Explain,” he growled, his voice low and tense.

The obligator stepped forward, hands held up, openly unarmed. Now that he was looking at her directly he could see the greater oddity: her shoulder length brown hair. All obligators kept their heads shaved, displaying with pride the tattoos that marked them all the way up their skulls. Her tattoos vanished into her hairline, dull and faded from lack of care.

“My name is Renee,” she said calmly. “I used to be a member of the Steel Ministry, but I have renounced that role and now serve the skaa rebellion.”

“Prove it,” Neil said.

“Lord Ruler, Neil,” Wymack said. “Half the people in this room are skaa Mistings. Do you think we’d invite one of the enemy in without doing our due diligence?”

“We’ve done half a dozen jobs with her,” Nicky chimed in. “She’s good, honest.”

“I apologize for startling you,” Renee said. “I know my tattoos do not inspire confidence, but I am willing to swear on whatever you wish that I mean you no harm.”

“Promises can be broken,” Neil said. _Anyone will betray you._

“Then I can do nothing but hope you will give me a chance.”

Neil studied her, ignoring the rest. Nausea twisted his stomach as he stared at the too-familiar pattern of her tattoos. She ranked far, far below his father in the hierarchy, but like all obligators, ultimately she would have answered to the Butcher. Her eyes were a deep brown, sincere and warm; a mask, he was certain, but one somehow all of these people had bought into. “Enough,” Kevin said impatiently. “Sit down.”

Neil kept his eyes on Renee as he skirted the room and sat back into his chair. “Thank you,” she said, and took a chair at the other end of the table, next to Andrew. He leaned in immediately to speak to her, and she replied, a smile on her lips and her hand toying with a wooden pendant on a necklace.

“Great. So proud of you all. Time to talk planning.”

“I thought you had a plan,” Yeden said, skeptical.

“I’ve got a framework, but we’ll need to discuss specifics. These people know more about their specialties than I ever could, and they’ll know what exactly is possible.”

“At its simplest form,” Dan said. “The plan is to rustle up an army for Yeden, cause chaos in the city, seize the palace, and then allow the government to collapse on itself.”

“That’s an awfully nice way of saying, ‘literally impossible,’ but I’m listening,” Nicky said, shooting a smirk at Neil which he did not return.

“If we’re trying to use an army, our biggest problem will be the Garrison.” Matt said. “They’re twenty-thousand strong and their whole job is to keep the peace. We’ll never defeat them while they’re within the walls.”

Wymack nodded and grabbed a piece of chalk, writing _Garrison_ up on the blackboard. “What else?”

“How exactly do we plan to cause enough chaos that we can march in?” Nicky asked. “The nobility are going to resist that as well.”

Wymack added _Chaos_ and _Great Houses_ to the board. “We also need to secure the treasury,” Dan noted. “Everything else is just short-term. The treasury is what will allow the rebellion to hold the city.”

“Plus we need to actually raise an army,” Allison said. “Which is easier said than done.”

“And let’s not forget the Lord Ruler, shall we?”

“The Steel Ministry will kill us long before we get to the Lord Ruler,” Aaron muttered, the first words Neil had heard him speak in either meeting. He might look identical to Andrew, but his bearing was more irritated than aloof.

“Excellent,” Wymack said, chalking up _Treasury_ , _Army_ , _Ministry_ and _Lord Ruler._ “That it?”

“You might as well add that we’re all bloody insane,” Nicky said cheerfully. “Though I’m afraid we can’t do much about that one.”

“I will have you gagged, Hemmick.”

“Wow, I didn’t know you were into that.”

“Speak to me like that again and you’ll be on the streets, you understand?”

“I’m wounded, Coach. Really, deeply, hurt.”

“I bleed for you,” Wymack said dryly. “All right. These are our tasks. Ideas?”

Neil stared at the list. It wasn’t just daunting, it was insurmountable. A collection of the most untouchable, powerful organizations in the world. And yet, as he peeked around, the others stared at it with varying degrees of pessimism…and a grim determination.

They meant it. They really meant to overthrow the Lord Ruler. If Neil were a more charitable person, he’d pity them. As it were, he was likely going to die with them when this inevitably went wrong.

“Well, I’ll start with the obvious,” Allison said. “I presume the army is my responsibility?”

“Recruitment, yes. We’ll need as many Soothers and Rioters as we can get our hands on to rustle up enough volunteers for an army.”

He wrote _Allison-Recruitment_ under _Army_. “Dan and Matt will be in charge of training, or at least making sure the right people are put in command. The question is where are we going to hide them? Any army of size is going to attract a lot of attention.”

“How about the Arguois caverns?” Matt suggested.

“You _know_ about those?” Yeden asked.

“Even the Lord Ruler does,” Wymack said dryly. “It’s just never been worth his while to weed them out. How many people do you have there?”

“About three hundred,” Yeden said, a little dazed.

“How many do you think the caverns could hold?”

“I was up there once,” Renee noted. “It could easily hold ten thousand, with the right organization. It’s a vast network, but the entrances are small and easily defensible.”

“Ten thousand sounds like a good number for an army. What do you think, Yeden?”

“That’s…good. Honestly, it’s a bit larger than I expected.”

“Hate to be the pessimist,” Matt said. “But ten thousand isn’t nearly enough to face off against the Garrison. Even if we got them outside the walls, we’d need at least equal numbers, and considering our forces will have much less training and resources, I’d want a lot more.”

“So we can’t face them in a direct confrontation.” Wymack tapped his chalk against the board, adding _Arguois Caverns_ to the list. “Any thoughts? I’ve got a plan to deal with the nobility, but with the Garrison holding the city, it all falls apart.”

Silence filled the room. Neil frowned, staring around at the various faces. Only Kevin and Andrew had refrained from making any suggestions, and he knew they’d been involved in this plot longer than the rest.

“Neil,” Wymack said, and he jumped, tensing as everyone turned to look at him. “Any ideas?”

“Please,” Allison said. “Let him be intimidated for a minute. He’s clearly overwhelmed.”

Neil shot her a glare. He _needed_ to get a hold of some more copper, if he was going to have to continue interacting with her for any length of time. For that matter, he needed to find a source of all the metals; he couldn’t rely on Kevin, who would want to hold the resources over his head to control him.

“No, I want to hear his ideas. You’re facing a much larger enemy, Neil. What do you do?”

“Yes, _Neil_ ,” Andrew said. “What does the rabbit do when the wolf comes knocking? Pray tell.”

Neil scowled at him, then turned his attention on Wymack, annoyance trumping fear. “Well, you don’t face them head on. Even if you won, you’d be too broken to fight off the next threat. Better to distract them and sneak off when they’re not paying attention.”

“Except how do we distract an entire army?” Dan asked. “The Garrison would only leave the city for a substantial threat, and the only way we could pose a big enough threat is to use our whole army. Which would defeat the purpose of getting the Garrison out of the city, because they’d crush us before we could sneak around them to take the city.”

Neil bit his cheek, mulling that one over. “What if…”

“Yes?”

Neil hesitated, glancing at Kevin. “How far away are the Pits of Hathsin?”

“Oh,” Matt said. “That’s devious.”

“No,” Kevin said, sitting up straight. “It’s perfect. The Pits aren’t well defended; it’s a penal colony, designed to keep people in, not out. A thousand soldiers could take it, easily.”

“Would the Lord Ruler send the entire Garrison out to protect a bunch of criminals, though?”

“It’s the most valuable resource he has. I would know, I worked there for a year. It’s not just a penal colony. It’s a mine. The Pits are the source of the Lord Ruler’s atium.”

“Oh,” Nicky said. “Damn.”

“When you said we had insider information, this is what you meant, isn’t it?” Dan asked.

Kevin nodded. “If we attacked the Pits, the Lord Ruler would have no choice but to send the Garrison, allowing the bulk of our forces to come in and take the city while they’re away.”

Dan looked excited now. “Ten thousand skaa outside the city is nothing, but if we could take the city walls? I could defend this city with ten thousand skaa. And if we interrupted the atium supply, the Lord Ruler wouldn’t be able to pay the Garrison to fight us anyway.”

“Pardon me for not understanding,” Yeden said. “What’s atium?”

“Only the most valuable Allomantic metal of them all,” Nicky said. “It lets you see the _future_.”

“An oversimplification,” Kevin said, “but yes. The Lord Ruler has a monopoly on its production. He keeps most of it for himself and sells the rest at exorbitant prices to the nobility. House Moriyama is in charge of managing the mine itself, but the majority of the atium still belongs to the Lord Ruler.”

“Cut off his supply, cut off his cashflow. Very neat,” Allison said. “I like it.”

“You always like it when other people do the work for you,” Nicky said.

“Excuse me? Who exactly is in charge of rustling up that army, hm?”

“Which brings me to another point,” Yeden said. “How exactly is _she_ —” his gesture encompassed her entire noble bearing— “supposed to recruit ten thousand skaa? The rebellion has been trying for a thousand years, and we can barely round up a few hundred. They’re just too beaten down.”

“I will encourage them,” Allison said simply. “You will find I can be very…persuasive.”

“I don’t…” Yeden trailed off. “Well I suppose if you say so…”

Nicky hid a giggle behind his hand and Neil’s stomach twisted as he recognized the scene from yesterday. “Stop it,” he snapped at Allison.

“Touchy,” she said, raising her hands innocently.

Yeden’s expression cleared a little. “What?”

“She pulled on your emotions,” Neil said shortly. “To make you think what she wanted.”

“More accurately, I Pushed,” Allison said. “If I Pulled on his emotions, I would’ve made him more skeptical. By Pushing, I made him calmer, more trusting.”

“You manipulated him,” Neil said, ice cold.

“Isn’t all human interaction about manipulation? When a young woman behaves a certain way to catch a man’s eye, isn’t she manipulating him to see her favourably? Or when you hide your face under ash and stay in the shadows, aren’t you manipulating us to try and make us underestimate you?”

“That’s—” he snarled.

Renee interrupted. “I think we’re getting off-topic. We know how we’ll deal with the Garrison, but we still need to deal with the Ministry and the nobility. I have a few ideas for the Ministry, but do we have a plan for the nobility?”

Neil glared at Allison for a long moment before tearing his gaze away. Yeden shot him a grateful look. He probably thought Neil was a kindred spirit due to his dirty street clothes, though he couldn’t be more wrong. Of everyone in this room, Neil was pretty sure only he and perhaps Allison had pure noble heritage.

“That one we do,” Wymack said, writing _Attack Pits_ _of Hathsin_ under _Garrison._ “We’re going to start a house war.”

“Get the nobility to start killing each other?” Nicky said. “I’m liking this plan more and more by the minute.”

“The Lord Ruler likes to allow the nobility to fight it out every century or so to keep them from amassing too much power. He likely won’t interfere,” Kevin said.

Wymack smiled grimly, adding _House War_ to the board as well. “Kevin and Neil will be adding to the chaos by picking fights with the local Allomancers. The nobility have an unspoken rule about not using their Mistborn to assassinate each other; if we breach it, soon enough they’ll be at each other's throats.”

“Will that be enough?”

“On its own, no. But if we spread the right rumours and misinformation, we can push them in that direction. Allison?”

“I can do individual visits,” she said dubiously. “But the Great Houses know I’m disinherited. They won’t be able to stop me from attending balls, but they won’t politic with me either.”

“We need someone among the Great Houses. The entire plan hinges on getting them infighting.”

“Say no more, Coach,” Nicky said. “I volunteer.”

“No way,” Aaron said immediately. “You’re not going into that snake pit alone. You’ll get torn to pieces. I can do it.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” Nicky preened. “They’ll adore me.”

“Hate to say it, but he’s right. It needs to be someone who can play nice, and no offense but I wouldn’t trust you to charm your way into anything.”

“Then get someone else,” Aaron said furiously.

“How about Neil? He’s pretty, under all that dirt,” Allison said, inspecting her nails.

“No.” Neil said flatly. “I can’t.”

“Can’t?” Andrew asked, “Or won’t?”

Neil glared at him. “Can’t.”

“Then it’s settled,” Wymack said loudly, cutting over Aaron’s protest and Nicky’s whining. “Nicky’s all we’ve got, so we’ll compromise. Kevin and Andrew will keep an eye on the balls, _from a safe distance._ You’re not to interfere, and definitely not to interact. Understood?”

“But—”

“We can hack out the details later. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Coach,” came the mutinous reply. Wymack ignored them in order to write _Allison and Nicky: Infiltration_ under _Great Houses_.

“That just leaves the Ministry and the Lord Ruler.”

“I have some information that will help in dealing with the Ministry,” Renee said primly. “And I still have some contacts within it. The greatest threat to us is the Canton of Inquisition and its Inquisitors. As for the obligators, I have maps of their locations and I know their methods well. The Inquisitors will be more challenging.”

“Did you ever meet any?” Nicky asked curiously.

“A few. They rarely interacted with the regular obligators, but they did lead a few of our raids. I can tell you this much: they are not immortal. They all have the full Mistborn powers, though most aren’t born with them. They are chosen from among the elite of the obligators and…transformed. The process is kept extremely secret. But the numbers remain fairly steady. About a dozen in Luthadel itself, and perhaps twice that elsewhere in the Empire.”

“Weaknesses?”

“Few that I know of, though I admit while I worked with them I was not as attentive as I could have been. They tire more easily than regular Allomancers, but their power tends to tip the balance in their favour regardless. I will look into it.”

Wymack nodded and wrote _Renee_ under _Ministry._ “Once we’ve stripped away all his supports, the Lord Ruler will be easier to deal with. Perfect world, he joins the Garrison and is out of the city when we strike. But otherwise the plan is to send in a team of Allomancers and throw him in the dungeons. With his metals stripped away, he’s just a man.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Neil and I will do it,” Kevin said. “We have to.”

Neil’s stomach turned at the notion. He tried to take comfort in the knowledge that they would almost certainly be caught long before it came to that, but he only felt cold.

“It’s not quite as dire as it seems,” Wymack said. “Without the treasury there’s only so much he can do to us. If we can pull off the rest, the Lord Ruler may be the least of our worries.”

“Though if you think about it, hostile dethroned pseudo-deities probably make for disagreeable neighbours,” Nicky said cheerfully. “We’ll have to figure something out eventually.”

“That’s not all we have planned,” Kevin said. “If I can, I’m going to kill him, too.”

Neil barely stopped his jaw from dropping in shock. Dead silence greeted the declaration. Neil stared at Kevin’s grim face. _He’s mad. It’s the only way._

“I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this yet,” Nicky said cautiously. “But the Lord Ruler is, you know. _Immortal._ There are stories of him walking out of burning buildings barely a skeleton and healing in seconds. Beheading only annoys him. You can’t kill him. Even imprisoning him will probably be impossible.”

“This world has taken enough from me,” Kevin said, voice deathly quiet. “The Lord Ruler spoke to me directly before he sentenced me to the Pits. He told me he did the same to my mother, years ago, when the Ministry found out she had an affair with a skaa man. I’m done letting them kill us with impunity. I’m going to tear out the roots of the system and build something new in its place.”

He pulled a small bar of metal out of his pocket and placed it on the table. It shimmered, a white, clay-like colour. “In the north they have a legend about another Allomantic metal, more powerful than the other ten. The Eleventh Metal. _That_ metal. I’m going to figure out how it works, and I’m going to kill him with it.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Dan said, skeptical.

“We’re not pinning all our hopes on a legend,” Wymack interrupted. “If Kevin can’t make it work, we’ll settle for tricking the Lord Ruler out of the city and robbing him silly. As it is, I think that’s it. Questions?”

“Just one,” Allison said. “Everyone’s got a job except Aaron. What’s he doing?”

“Aaron’s training with Abby so when you lot inevitably get your faces bashed in they can put the pieces back together. Yeden?”

The skaa man looked so overwhelmed Neil almost felt bad for him. “I suppose the plan seems…”

“Mad?” Nicky suggested.

“Adequate. Though a little vague.”

“We’ll smash out the details as we go. I want you all to go home and think on what you’re going to need and bring me a list.

“This time next year, this city will be ours.”


	4. Chapter 4

Neil flicked a penny onto the ground as he ran, jumping into the air and Pushing off the coin. He soared through the mist and landed on a rooftop, his stride barely faltering as his bare feet struck the shingles. He flared pewter, using pure strength to launch himself to the next building. He pelted across the roof and threw himself into open air.

The wind whipped his mistcloak around him, twisting and tangling the strips. He let himself fall till he was nearly at the ground before flicking a coin down and Pushing to slow himself, landing at a dead sprint.

He’d only been training for a few months, but this felt like breathing. Kevin was like a soldier, rigid and analytical, standing at the edge of the rooftops checking anchors and calculating angles.

Neil wasn’t like that. The mists curled around him, attracted to his Allomancy, and he thought if his mother was here right now and told him if he didn’t give this up he would die tomorrow, he would still pick this. He was _made_ for this, soaring through the night like a leaf in a gale, always finding an anchor in the nick of time, avoiding disaster by the skin of his teeth. He hurtled through the air with reckless abandon, trusting his metals and his instincts, and he felt _free._

He landed on a rooftop and skidded off the edge, dropping downwards. A blue steel-line led to a metal window latch below him and he Pushed off it, flipping midair and shooting skyward, his cloak flapping behind him. He Pushed harder, finding a metal chimney and launching himself upwards.

He burst free of the mists, hanging in midair for a suspended moment. The stars above him sparkled and shone, vibrant colours and patterns that only Mistborn ever saw. He gazed upwards, smiling giddily, and slowly dropped backwards into the blanketing mist.

He flicked a coin below him to slow his descent and flared pewter as he landed. He strode across the tenement roof, trying to let his glee at using his powers flatten out his annoyance at Kevin.

They’d both struck at different noble Houses tonight, sowing the chaos needed to get them infighting. Already Nicky reported that their balls were becoming tense affairs, more about forging alliances than pleasure.

It was just that Neil knew he could do _more._ Kevin had given him strict instructions to get out as soon as he was challenged. It was about being seen, not what they accomplished. But what was the point of having incredible power if all you did was flit through windows, shoot a couple coins and disappear, nothing gained?

Neil shook the thoughts free and jumped to the next roof, using hinges and metal doorknobs as anchors to bound from roof to roof. With tin, his view of the city was vastly more open than any non-Misting. He tracked the progress of guard patrols by the light of their torches, ambling their predictable paths through the city.

He landed on the city wall well away from any lights, eyes drawn to some kind of disturbance near the gate. Voices scratched at the very edge of his tin-enhanced hearing.

He hesitated. Kevin would want him to go straight back to Allison’s estate, as he’d been ordered.

He glanced behind him furtively and took off down the wall at a run. A pair of guards approached and he dropped a coin, Pushing himself upwards in an arc just high enough to stay out of regular eyeshot. His bare feet hit the stone and propelled him along until he was right above the gate.

“It’s late,” someone growled, voice carrying easily to Neil. He crouched on the wall, peering down at the group gathered at its foot.

A soldier in odd-looking armour made a pacifying gesture. “I’m sure it’s just a regular delay. The prisoners are often lax about their duties.”

The first, clearly a leader, swatted away his hand. His breastplate was made of polished wood over a grey uniform, and he carried a dueling cane rather than a sword.

 _Hazekillers_ , Neil thought, blood running cold. They were ordinary soldiers specifically trained to combat Allomancers, elite warriors kept only by the Great Houses. Kevin had once been one of them, and he’d lectured Neil at length about the threat they posed. They knew Mistborn abilities intimately and carried no metal that an Allomancer could manipulate.

“I am not some servant to wait upon the whims of slaves,” the first said. Half a dozen soldiers in similar garb hovered about, calculatedly out of reach. They had an emblem on their breastplates, but Neil was too far to make it out.

“No one would ever suggest such a thing, your Lordship,” the second said, bowing his head.

“Psh. My father expects too much. Perhaps we should go. Losing the shipment would certainly force him to see my value.”

The second murmured something indistinct.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing, your Lordship.”

The first man grabbed the second by his throat, squeezing, though he stood several inches shorter. “That’s what I thought,” he hissed.

The action turned him halfway towards Neil, and his heart stopped. A tattoo adorned his cheekbone, too distinct to mistake even at this distance.

Moriyama business. Which meant _atium._

Neil took off back down the wall at a dead run. He burned steel, waiting for the lines to erupt outside the wall indicating the road to Fellise.

Long ago, some clever craftsman had embedded two long lines of metal into the road. Neil burned steel, Pushing himself into the air and soaring down the road, using the twin lines to keep himself pointed towards Fellise, where Allison still kept an estate despite her ill favour with her parents.

He pushed himself to greater and greater speeds, reckless in his Allomancy. The wind whipped his face so hard tears streaked backwards across his cheekbones, but he didn’t dare slow. His mind was running back, two weeks ago, to a training session with Kevin. 

\---

“Ten metals,” Neil said, following Kevin across the rooftop.

“What?” Kevin said impatiently.

“You said there were ten metals. But we’ve only ever practiced with eight.”

Kevin paused, looking uncharacteristically unsettled. “Your training—”

“I’m supposed to be your support, aren’t I? I can’t fight with you if I don’t know what the enemy might be wielding. Everyone talks about how powerful atium is, but we’ve never even tried it.”

Kevin’s cloak whipped around him, strips blending and winding with the mists. “I’ve never burnt atium,” he admitted quietly.

Neil paused. It was easy to forget Kevin had only Snapped a year ago, considering how knowledgeable he was about Allomancy. “Why not?”

“It’s ludicrously expensive. We can’t afford that kind of expenditure when Wymack is already overextending himself on supplies for the army and Nicky’s disguises.”

“But you know how it works.”

Kevin nodded. “Atium allows you to see just a second into the future. It’s like…it was described to me as shadows. Like every person had a shadow leading them around. When someone tried to strike you, you would see the blow coming and be able to counter it before they even knew what they were about to do.”

“That sounds…powerful.”

“They say a Mistborn burning atium is nigh on unstoppable. The only thing that can combat one is another Mistborn with atium.”

Neil absorbed that in silence, stepping up to the edge of the rooftop and curling his toes over the ledge. The height didn’t really bother him. He’d leapt from too many buildings to still worry about falling. “And the other metal?”

“Gold is…” Kevin shook his head in frustration. “It would be easier to show you. Gold can be uncomfortable.”

He withdrew a gold coin from his coin pouch. He drew an obsidian dagger and shaved off a flake, swallowing it. He paused for a moment and nodded. “It’s pure.”

He shaved a little into Neil’s hand and he hesitated for an instant before swallowing it down. The metal scraped his throat without the usual liquid to wash it down.

Inside, he felt a new reserve spring into being. He prodded it nervously, unsure what could put Kevin off so much.

“Get it over with,” Kevin said.

Neil took a deep breath and burned it. Vertigo hit him like a wave.

He was in two places at once, seeing himself, and himself again. He was a nobleman; he’d trained under his father for years, and wielded blades like an extension of his hands. His mother had died long ago, and any small bit of kindness he’d harboured had long since been beaten out of him.

The other him was smaller, ragged. He hid in corners, suspicious eyes flashing like a rat in a gutter. His bones jutted from his skin. His mother’s lessons bled from him; don’t slow down, don’t look back. Don’t trust anyone.

That Neil never would have joined with the rebellion. He’d have fled, preserving his own flimsy hide. He’d never have meant anything, to anyone. Neil hated him, and simultaneously knew how close he’d been.

With a pop, his gold ran out and he stumbled, almost falling off the roof as he suddenly found himself occupying only one body. His hands shook, his breath coming in ragged pants. “What—”

Foreign emotions flooded his body. Cold cruelty; fear; a deep, abiding selfishness. He shook his head, trying to clear it. He’d been in two places at once. He’d _been_ both.

“Did you see that?” he gasped.

“No,” Kevin said, rounding him to stand directly before him. “It’s not real. It’s only a hallucination.”

“What _was_ it?”

“Gold is like atium only in that it seems to affect time. Or at least, it shows a different version of time. A person you could have become, if only things had been different.”

Neil shuddered. He could still feel the coldness that lived in both of the other versions of him. “I don’t think I’ll be burning that one again,” he said.

Kevin didn’t push. That was unusual, for him, which told Neil he wasn’t doing a very good job of sounding normal. “I hope atium isn’t as disorienting.”

“From what I’ve heard it’s quite the opposite. Atium doesn’t just show you the future, it enhances your mind so you can process that information. Many accounts describe it as nearly euphoric.”

“So we steal it from the Lord Ruler.”

Kevin nodded. “So we do.”

\---

Neil dropped back into the present as he shot through the countryside towards the glowing villa of Fellise. The crew vaccillated between living at Allison’s estate there and Wymack’s workshop, though Kevin and Neil often stayed with her. Allomancers coming and going from a noble estate were much less suspicious than the same Allomancers in the skaa district. 

Neil burst onto the wide boulevard and set off at a pewter-enhanced sprint to the gate of Allison’s estate. He dropped a coin and vaulted over the fence, Pushing off the metal gate to fling himself up onto the roof.

“You’re late,” Kevin said, turning to glare at him.

Neil skidded to a stop. “There’s an atium shipment coming into the city right now,” he said quickly. “I spotted Riko Moriyama at the gate—if we hurry—”

“You were supposed to come straight back here,” Kevin snapped.

“I just overheard them! It’s a perfect opportunity—they didn’t have any Allomancers with them, just hazekillers, if we can get in there and steal a couple beads of atium—”

“Have you learned nothing from my lessons,” Kevin snarled. “Hazekillers can kill you.”

Frustration boiled over. “We need that atium! The Inquisitors are going to have some, and you can guarantee the Lord Ruler will. Once it goes into the treasury we won’t be able to touch it.”

“No,” Kevin said, shaking his head. “It’s too risky. We don’t know the whole situation. We’re not throwing ourselves into a fight blind and reckless.”

“But—”

“ _No.”_

Neil fumed, twisting to glare at Andrew, perched on a chimney puffing on his pipe. “Can’t you tell him he’s being stupid?”

Andrew stared at him, unimpressed. “It is not my job to be Kevin’s spine.”

“The whole job could hang on us having atium. We _have_ to go after it.”

“That’s enough,” Kevin interrupted. “We’re not doing it. You can stop acting like a fool.”

Neil clenched his fists, baring his teeth at him. “When your cowardice brings the Ministry down on our heads and we have no defense, I will remind you of this moment.”

“And when your recklessness gets you killed, you will wish you listened to me.”

Neil growled, whipping around so his cloak spun in the air behind him and dropped off the side of the building, Pulling himself to his window using the metal window frame. He always left the window unlatched; several of Allison’s servants couldn’t be vouched for, so it wouldn’t do to be seen in his Mistborn garb.

He pried the window open and dropped into his room, leaving ashen smears on the pristine ledge and floors. The room was small, though utterly lavish compared to what Neil was accustomed to. He flung open his chest, which contained only a small heap of clothing. He flipped it, revealing his stash of metals.

His iron and steel were depleted from his frantic journey here, and his pewter needed replenishing as well. He tucked a few vials of metal into his sash and filled his coin pouch with pennies; basically worthless, but still more than enough to kill.

A scratching at the door grated at his enhanced hearing. A second later, Andrew pushed the previously-locked door open and wandered in, casting only a glancing look at Neil before pushing past him to inspect his windowsill.

“Can I help you?” Neil asked, folding his arms over his chest.

“You are just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. Have I mentioned I hate surprises?”

“I’m not here to make you happy.”

“I would advise against making me angry.”

“Then you should get the hell out of my room,” Neil snapped.

Andrew turned, facing Neil with a glint in his eyes. “Do the others still think you’re quiet?”

Neil opened his mouth to reply but as he did, Andrew stepped into his space, staring up at him from a scant couple inches away. Neil tensed, hardly breathing. “The wind makes your eye drops wear out faster, did you know?”

Neil flinched away and something cold and hard closed on his wrist. He wrenched backwards, realizing the trap an instant too late. The handcuff locked onto the post at the end of his bed, trapping him in place.

The metal tore at his skin, digging into his wrist bone. Andrew retreated, leaning against the open windowsill with a smug air.

Neil scowled. “Brilliant plan,” he snapped. “Put handcuffs on an Allomancer, see how well that—”

He faltered. His steel-lines leapt from the centre of his chest to every source of metal in the room. His vials, the coin pouch at his waist, the cup on his nightstand, the latch on his chest. The handcuffs, however, remained stubbornly untouched by a blue thread.

“Silver,” Andrew said. “It’s completely immune to Allomancy. Useless to burn, and impossible to Push or Pull. Renee had a pair from back when she was an obligator. She was no longer using them.”

He held up a small, metallic key that also didn’t register to his steel-senses. Neil yanked at the cuffs experimentally. They were thick enough not to be broken by a pewterarm or a Mistborn; he imagined it was quite the fortune in silver. The weakest link was probably the wooden rail, but it was as thick around as his wrist.

“Why?” he growled.

“You were going to go after the atium on your own.”

Neil didn’t bother to deny it. “I don’t see how that’s your problem.”

“It shouldn’t be. But Kevin is, and if you get yourself killed he will buckle. So here we are.”

Neil debated how much trouble he would get in if he shot some coins at Andrew and knocked him out the window. A lot, he decided. “Why is Kevin your problem?”

“We made a deal, back when he first crawled out of the Pits. He required protection, and he was willing to trade for it.”

“A Smoker, protect a full Mistborn?” Neil asked, disbelieving.

“There are more threats in this world than just the physical,” Andrew said, plucking distastefully at the bowl of nuts on his nightstand. “I keep Kevin’s cowardice from threatening his real life.”

“And what do you get in exchange?”

“A reason.”

“A reason to what?”

Andrew studied him for a long moment. “To try.”

Neil frowned, not bothering to hide his frustration at Andrew’s cryptic answers. “Then why won’t you train with him?” It was a longstanding grievance of Kevin’s that Andrew refused to accept hazekiller training.

“Because he is failing his end of the bargain. He wants me to fight for him, but he doesn’t even believe himself that we can win. I see no reason to put in the effort if he can’t trust me enough to grow a spine.”

“We’ll all be dead by the end of the year,” Neil said. “Why make a promise you can’t keep?”

“Who said I can’t keep it?” Andrew said, eyes glinting.

It should have been absurd, but looking into those shimmering, steel-hard eyes, Neil almost believed him. He shook off that thought, returning his attention to the handcuffs. His lockpicks were just at the bottom of his chest, but the wood was too thick for him to detect the metal through it.

“I propose a game,” Andrew said. “To pass the time. I will ask you a question, and you will answer truthfully. In return, I will give you a truth. I’ve even let you have the first turn.”

“How kind of you,” Neil muttered sarcastically, scouring the ground for something he could use to pry the cuffs apart. “What do you want to know?”

“Why do you still wear that earring?”

Neil paused, hand rising involuntarily to the unassuming hoop. His instinct was to deflect, hide, but the answer was innocuous enough that he shrugged. “My mother gave it to me. Kevin says Allomancers can’t affect metal within the body, even if it isn’t fully embedded. It could be a weapon in an emergency.”

“Boring. Your turn.”

Neil mulled it over. _He’s trying to distract you,_ his mother’s voice whispered. He should just break the bedframe and go. Allison would be livid, though.

“How did you end up in the rebellion?”

“That’s a long story. I’m not sure you’ve earned it.”

“You asked a lame question. Your own fault.”

“Hm,” Andrew said, eyeing him critically. “My mother was a whore. You know the law: a nobleman can bed any skaa woman he pleases, so long as he has her killed before there is a risk of children. She managed to escape with Aaron and I, but that was the extent of her bravery. She kept one child for the extra food tokens and sold me to an orphanage.”

He drew his pipe out, tamping down some tobacco and lighting it. He looked contemplative. “The orphanage loaned the children’s labour to whoever could pay. Families with too few children to work and feed the elderly would adopt us, only to return us when we became too much trouble.

“Eventually I stumbled upon Aaron. His mother had discovered his Allomancy and was trying to pawn it off for drugs. It was only a matter of time before the Ministry caught her clumsy ways, so I disposed of her. Nicky tipped us off to a thieving crew looking for labourers; even back then he kept an ear to the ground. Between my Smoking and Aaron’s Seeking, Wymack caught wind of us. The rest is history.”

“Aaron’s a Seeker?” Neil asked, surprised.

Andrew gave him a dour stare. “For someone as paranoid as you are, you know incredibly little about your crewmates.”

“ _Our_ crewmates,” Neil corrected. “You’re more a part of this than I am.”

Andrew leaned his elbow against the windowsill, taking a long pull on his pipe. “Why are you still here?”

Neil rattled the handcuff pointedly.

“Not here in this room,” Andrew said. “You wanted Kevin to teach you Allomancy. He has, or at least enough to get you started. You don’t believe we can succeed, but if anything you are more zealous than the others. If you were honest before, you would have fled by now. You don’t add up.”

Neil looked down and away, scowling. He was right on all counts.

He remembered burning gold, inhabiting the cold, hungry space of his beggar self. The crew was fragmented, rude and grating. They gathered in the evenings at Wymack’s workshop and drank until they were loud and crass, throwing insults like lashes.

They also laughed. He’d not thought it possible for a group of skaa to be so unabashedly _happy_ in the face of certain death. He’d never stood in a room before knowing that every person there would trust the others with their very lives.

He shrugged, and when he answered it was with perfect honesty. “I guess I just want to know if it’s real.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know silver isnt the metal thats immune to allomancy but what am i going to do, put him in aluminum handcuffs? _ridiculous_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> neil bonds with his crewmates and picks a fight with someone very much not his own size
> 
> warnings for violence and some injuries, including a bit of what I can only describe as eye horror-ish stuff. mostly non-graphic

Neil peeled his eyes open to the familiar sight of his room in Wymack’s shop.

The narrow space was packed in with a set of similar rooms on the upper floor of the building, above where the actual apprentice craftsmen stayed. Based on the light through the window, Neil would guess it was past midday. The lifestyle of a Mistborn was somewhat nocturnal; he hadn’t gotten back from another of Kevin’s “raids” yesterday until well past midnight.

He dressed and after some deliberation, washed the ash from his arms and face. The others always made a point to be clean at their meetings; even Yeden had finally given in to the prevailing winds and had his clothes washed. Neil was careful to keep his hair darkened and his eyedrops refreshed but blending in with this crew meant looking a little more respectable.

He poked his head out the door and burned tin. The light from the windows seemed to brighten and he squinted against it, listening with enhanced ears. He could hear shuffling in the adjacent rooms; he hadn’t overslept the meeting, then.

He released his tin and slipped out into the hall, heading for the meeting room. He paused in the doorway, checking with his tin again, but he could only detect one person inside, breathing softly.

“I can hear you,” a voice said through the door, and he started, hard. Only two other people in the crew could burn tin and hear him when he was sneaking, and that voice wasn’t Kevin. “Please come in.”

He braced himself and pushed the door open just wide enough to admit himself. Renee sat at the table alone, hands folded delicately next to a cup of wine. Her clothes were a light cream colour, a distinct contrast to Neil’s ash-stained garb.

She gestured to the array of empty seats. “Sit?”

Neil skirted the table to put himself near the bolthole. Her eyes slid over to the concealed door, clearly noting his choice.

“You don’t trust me,” Renee said calmly.

“I don’t understand you,” Neil said, sitting. He checked his metals—he still had a decent amount. Kevin insisted he burn away his reserves before going to sleep, as some of the metals they used could be toxic with prolonged exposure, but he’d taken to sleeping with a few critical metals in his system. It wasn’t as if he’d live long enough to die of poisoning.

 Renee smiled gently. Her tattoos crinkled and bent around her eyes, the lines faded from lack of care but still reminiscent of the intricate patterns on his father’s face. “I’m not offended,” she assured him. “I know the damages I and others of my kind have wrought. Your caution is only to be expected.”

“How did you end up with the rebellion?” Neil asked.

She tapped her fingers on her wine cup, studying him curiously. If she was surprised by his bluntness, it didn’t show. “I was a member of the Canton of Inquisition. You are familiar with them, yes?”

“They hunt down skaa Mistings.”

“Precisely. And I was very, very good at it. I was a member of a strike team tasked to bring in Mistings once they’d been identified. I won’t pretend I cared much about the moral justifications. I took pride in my skill and my superiority. I enjoyed the hunting and the fighting and I rose through the ranks very quickly. Until it was discovered that my mother dallied with a skaa man.”

She took a long pull of her wine cup, eyes distant with memory. “She was noble, naturally, but lowborn. She had many such dalliances, with skaa and noble alike. There is nothing to say, even now, that I’m not fully noble-blooded, but doubt was cast, and the Canton of Inquisition does not allow for doubt. My mother and her suspected lover were executed, and when it was my own skin on the line, I fled, disappearing into the same underground networks I had once hunted in. Even then I didn’t truly grasp the evil of my actions. To my mind, if skaa were clumsy enough to get caught, they deserved to be handed over to the Inquisitors.”

Neil’s hand twitched towards his scarred stomach, and he dug his fingernails into his palm to keep them still. His father had never been so callous as to allow the Inquisitors to get a hold of him—their torture wasn’t the variety one survived. But he’d heard the screams, down in the bowels of Kredik Shaw. The bodies they removed from the dungeons barely resembled humans anymore.

“What changed?” he asked, tugging himself back to the present.

“For a long time, nothing. I went from city to city, selling my abilities to whoever had the money, heedless of their goals. I hid in skaa refuges, making excuses for my tattoos and intimidating those who didn’t wish to shelter me. About a year ago, I found myself in Fadrex, hiding in a safehouse. The woman who ran it brought me a bowl of broth and told me a story. Her son was a noble bastard, a Misting. He was ruthlessly hunted and captured by an obligator by the name of Natalie Shields. Me.”

Her voice cracked on the last syllable. Her eyes flooded with tears, her hand jumping to her mouth involuntarily. She closed her eyes, inhaling shakily until she had her emotions back under control. “I don’t know why her story affected me so,” she whispered. “I couldn’t sleep all that night, tortured by the knowledge of what I had done. Perhaps it was her kindness. The obligators had robbed her of so much, yet she had taken their cruelty and used it as an excuse to shield others.

“In the morning I went to her on my knees and confessed. I offered her my services, for as long as I lived, in payment for what I took from her. She was, understandably, distraught. She said she didn’t want my penance, she wanted me gone. So I left her and made my way to the skaa rebellion, and through them eventually to Wymack.”

Her hand drifted up to grip her necklace, rubbing her thumb across it’s carved patterns. He didn’t know what it was, only that Abby had given it to her.

He fixed his eyes on the strange pendant. “Do you think it’ll make up for it?” he asked slowly. “Helping the rebellion?”

“No,” she said, dropping her hand. “Do you?”

Neil shrugged. He hadn’t meant it as a judgement.

Renee leaned forward, placing her cup down. “I am a bad person trying very hard to be a good one,” she said. “I know I have no right to ask anything of you, after all I’ve done, but I hope we can learn to trust each other. I’d like to be your friend, Neil.”

The sincerity in her eyes felt like a lash. Neil looked away quickly, studying the barren walls. “Why not?” he muttered. “We’ll all be dead in a year anyway.”

“You don’t know that,” she said, a smile in her voice. “We may yet win.”

“Do you honestly believe that?”

“I have faith.”

“After everything you’ve seen?”

“Yes. I have seen kindness in the darkest places. Is it so terrible to believe the world might not be as cruel as it seems?”

“It’s not the world that’s cruel,” Neil said. “It’s the people in it.”

“Oh, wise words,” Andrew said from the doorway, startling them both. He tapped two fingers to his temple in mockery and went to sit beside Renee, Kevin in tow.

Dammit. He was Mistborn; Andrew shouldn’t be able to sneak up on him anymore. He listened with half an ear as Renee inquired as to Andrew’s health and he promptly stole her wine.

Burning tin on a low level allowed him to detect footsteps approaching, so at least he wasn’t caught off guard when Matt breezed into the room. His eyes lit up when he spotted Neil. “Hey! How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Neil said as Matt grabbed the seat next to him. His hair was mussed and spiky, and he wore his usual sleeveless vest despite the chill outside.

“And what exactly is that?” Matt said, prodding at Neil’s cheek. He swatted his hand away. Alright, maybe washing the ash off his face had been a bad idea.

“We raided Keep Hasting last night,” he said. “They had a team of hazekillers ready.”

“And you got out with just a bruise,” Matt said, sounding proud. “That’s our Neil.”

Neil couldn’t quite keep his expression under control. He and Kevin still hadn’t resolved their fight over what kind of raids they should be doing; he’d been chastised for sticking around long enough to get hit by a dueling cane.

Matt caught the look on his face. “What?”

“Nothing,” Neil huffed, folding his arms and looking away.

_For someone as paranoid as you are, you know incredibly little about your crewmates._

Neil flicked his head like he could shake the errant thought out. He and Andrew had developed something of a truce in recent weeks, sitting out on the rooftops after Kevin turned in, soaking in a cloud of pipe smoke. It meant Andrew’s words lingered on in his mind longer than he needed them.

The crew was already taking up too much of his headspace, but he resigned himself and asked, “Have you heard from Dan recently?”

Matt sighed, resting his face on his hand. “Yeah, but she can’t be too specific in her letters. In case they get intercepted, right? But I think it’s going well. She had to throw a couple of the generals around with pewter to get their respect, but she’s whipping the soldiers into shape. I still miss her, though.”

Neil nodded uncertainly. “Um,” he said, fishing for something to keep the conversation on Matt. “How did you guys meet?”

It was the right thing to say, because Matt’s smile reappeared, like the sun breaking through the clouds. “We met when I joined Wymack’s crew, almost four years ago now. But she did _not_ like me at first.”

At Neil’s questioning look, he elaborated. “Dan grew up in a skaa orphanage, but I grew up as a noble. Illegitimate, but I was still allowed in my father’s house. He had lots of mistresses. Skaa, noble, he didn’t care. More children means more Allomancers, right? He paid the obligators to look the other way and had a whole homegrown squad of Allomancers at his disposal.”

“But you’re part skaa.”

“Exactly. And that got out in a way my father couldn’t sweep under the rug, so he tossed me out on the street. Abby found me trying to hire on as a pewterarm and recruited me. Dan couldn’t stand me at first, but I can’t really blame her. She’s had pretty lousy experiences with nobility.”

“Haven’t we all,” Neil murmured and Matt let out a huff of assent.

He was spared trying to continue the conversation by the arrival of the rest of the crew. Voices bubbled over as they all found their seats, Wymack at the head of the room with Yeden and Abby beside him.

Abby was perhaps one of the greatest mysteries on the team. She was tall and thin, draped in the colourful, V-patterned robes of a Terris steward. As was their culture, she was absolutely rattling with metal jewelry; earrings, necklaces, wrist-bracers and rings dangled from every limb.

How a Terris steward had ended up with the rebellion was a story Neil wasn’t privy to. Terris people were bred for obedience and raised from birth as the perfect servants; it was the mark of a Great House to have at least a few serving in their retinue.

Abby certainly seemed the type. She sat near the head of the table with unimpeachable posture, hands folded in her lap. There was a bet going around that she and Wymack were a couple, but Neil couldn’t see what the rough skaa craftsman and the strict Terriswoman would have in common.

Wymack clapped his hands once to get their attention and launched into the meeting with no preamble. “Alright you lot. Reports, starting with Nicky.”

“Oh gosh, where do I start? Look the nobility are the worst and everything, but damn they know how to throw a party.”

“Nicky,” Wymack warned.

“Don’t be such a killjoy, Coach. And speaking of, House Tekiel has seen happier days. Apparently _someone_ assassinated their heir.” He sent a pointed look at Kevin.

“It wasn’t us,” Kevin said. “The Great Houses must be sending their own assassins. They’re starting to war among themselves.”

“Yeah,” Nicky said, resting his head on his hand “They’re really worried. Erik even warned me that I should get out of the city before it gets any worse. What a sweetheart.”

“Erik?” Wymack said sharply. “The Klose heir? I thought I told you to stay away from him.”

“Oh, he’s harmless, I swear. He’s one of the good ones.”

“There are no good ones,” Yeden snapped.

“I wouldn’t go so far as that,” Wymack said, eyeing Allison, who, as usual, wore full noble attire. “But if he finds out you’re skaa, he’ll turn you in.”

“Allison didn’t turn Seth in,” Nicky pouted.

“I am the exception,” she said dismissively. “Not the rule.”

“Maybe Erik’s an exception too! He really seems interested in how the skaa are treated—"

“And was his interest compassionate or intellectual?” Wymack cut in.

The barest second of hesitation gave Nicky away. “They are not like us,” Wymack said. “Maybe if the stakes were lower, we could afford to try to recruit him, but we don’t have any margin for error in this. I need you focussed on spying, not flirting.”

“Yes, Coach,” Nicky mumbled, scowling at his hands.

Wymack sighed. “Look, he seems like an alright sort. We’ll try not to get him killed. But we can’t waste time on one nobleman at a time like this.”

“Yes, Coach,” Nicky echoed dully.

Wymack pursed his lips at Nicky’s tone, but left the subject behind. “Allison?”

“Recruitment is behind, but not disastrously,” she said. “The weapons shipments have come in, so at least our new troops will get to start training with real swords immediately.”

“Excellent. On that subject, I’m calling Dan back to Luthadel.”

“You are?” Matt said excitedly, then blushed at his own eagerness.

“One of her lieutenants brought me a verbal report yesterday. She’s laid a good foundation with the troops, but they need to see their actual leaders in charge. I’m sending Yeden to the Caverns and bringing Dan back to help with moving recruits.”

“Finally, I’m sick of the thundercloud looming over our shoulders every day,” Allison said. “All this disapproving bullshit is bad for my skin.”

“You’re hardly pleasant company yourself,” Yeden shot back.

“Oh, can it, you two,” Wymack said. “Anybody else?”

“I have some news, but it is less positive,” Renee said. She reached into a satchel at her side and pulled out a rolled map, which she lay out across the table. The winding, narrow streets of Luthadel sprawled across the page, peppered with little red marks. “This shows all the locations of the Ministry’s Soothing stations throughout the city.”

“Their what?”

“Soothing stations,” Renee said grimly. “The Ministry employs Soothers within the skaa quarters to repress the general populace. They just sit in their buildings extending a dampening field all around them. And because all they do, all day, is Soothe, they are very, very good.”

“As good as Allison?” Kevin asked, staring intently at the map.

“Arguably better, but they don’t need to be as precise. They just need to keep people from any extreme ranges of emotion that might lead to disruption.”

Wymack cursed. “I always thought the skaa in Luthadel were more beaten down than elsewhere. I had no idea it was so systematic. What can we do?”

“The only good news is that these locations are a closely guarded secret. I had to disguise myself as an acolyte to get in close enough to steal it. I will have to return this map tomorrow before it is noticed missing—Abby, I presume you can copy it in that time?”

“Certainly.”

“Thank you. Anyway, because they are so secret, the stations are not highly defended. No fighting Allomancers. If we could coordinate our strike times, it would only take a couple hundred soldiers to take them all down.”

“We can’t afford to play our hand yet, so it’ll have to happen the day we march into the city,” Wymack said. “Matt, I want you and Dan to formulate an attack plan once she’s back.”

“On it, Coach.”

Allison tipped her head, studying the map. “Several of those stations are within range of my recruitment meeting-rooms. We’ll want to move them to more neutral locations.”

“Let me know what you need and I’ll make it happen. Kevin, how are the raids going?”

“The nobility are—”

“We’re not achieving anything,” Neil interrupted. “The nobility have raised their defenses and we can barely get within the walls without encountering Allomancers. We should’ve been stealing atium and assassinating people before they got this wary, but we’ve got nothing to show for it. We need to strike harder.”

Eyebrows raised around the room as Neil folded his arms, glaring at Kevin in challenge. Matt looked positively delighted at his tirade.

Kevin scowled back. “We’ve achieved exactly what we intended with minimal risk to ourselves. The nobility are knifing each other in the dark already. It’s only a matter of time before there is open warfare on the streets.”

“The kid’s got a point,” Nicky said. “I mean, do we even have any atium? It’s going to be hard to take down the Lord Ruler without it.”

“We have the Eleventh Metal. He won’t be expecting that.”

“Yeah, and have you figured out how it works yet?” Neil shot at him.

Kevin paused. “The less all of you know, the less you can give away if the Ministry—”

“You have no clue,” Neil said. “Otherwise you would’ve told Andrew and I. We need atium.”

“We might be able to buy some,” Wymack said dubiously. “We’d need to steal the funds, but—”

“We’ll handle it,” Kevin cut in. “I have a plan. Just because I haven’t shared it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

Neil opened his mouth to argue but Wymack spoke over him. “This is your area of expertise, so I’m trusting you, Kevin. But if things haven’t changed by the next meeting, we’ll have to discuss other options. That gives you six weeks to procure some atium. Everybody happy?”

Neil subsided into his chair. Andrew leaned forward, meeting Neil’s gaze with a mocking eyebrow. Neil scowled back and looked away, scanning the others. Allison bore a sly smirk, as if she’d just had her suspicions confirmed about something.

“That covers everything. Any other news? No? Alright, you know what to do. Clear out.”

Despite his dismissal, several of the crew members stayed, leaning into each other discussing their various roles. Kevin stood, giving Neil’s shoulder a shove to indicate he should follow.

They wound their way up the stairs to the roof, Andrew trailing behind. Kevin rounded on Neil before the door even swung closed behind them. “How dare you question me in front of the others!”

Neil folded his arms, unimpressed. “You won’t listen to me. If it takes Coach to get you to take this seriously, then I’ll say whatever I have to.”

“I have a plan. You should not have contradicted me.”

“Prove it. What’s your big plan?”

Kevin took a deep breath. “We’re going to raid Kredik Shaw.”

Neil stopped dead. Even Kevin looked a little stunned at his own boldness as he continued. “Andrew has been studying the guard patterns while we were out raiding. He thinks there’s an opening around midnight when we could sneak in.”

“Lord Ruler, Kevin,” Neil said, shaking his head in amazement. “You’re either completely rational or completely crazy, no in between.”

Kevin looked oddly flattered. “I’ve got maps of the palace and guard routes. We should be able to get in and out without detection, if we’re fast enough.”

“What’s our goal? The treasury?”

“No, it’s too well-defended. There’s a room in the centre of Kredik Shaw where the Lord Ruler goes once every three days, but no one knows what he does there. We’re going to break in and find out.”

“You think there’ll be clues to his immortality in there?”

“It’s possible.”

“Okay,” Neil said, looking around at the twilit city. Curls of mist were starting to form, flitting around the edges of buildings. “When are we going?”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight!” Neil yelped. “And you’re just bringing this up now?”

“As I said, the more people know, the more they can give away if they are captured. With how reckless you’ve been recently—”

“Because you were shutting me out!”

“—I was concerned that if I shared details they would be discovered and the opening would be sealed.”

Neil swore several times. “Andrew, you knew about this?”

Andrew shrugged.

“Asshole,” Neil muttered. He took a deep breath, tamping down on the burning anger in his chest. “Tell me what I have to do.”

\---

Three hours later they stood on a tenement building, staring across the wide-open space surrounding the palace. It loomed, even more ominous in full darkness, massive spires piercing the mists. It had no walls. After all, who would be foolish enough to attack the Lord Ruler?

“That door there,” Kevin said, pointing. With tin, they could easily make it out, though the guards posted there wouldn’t be able to see them. “At midnight the guards will be replaced, and another patrol won’t come by for almost an hour. If we can knock them out without raising an alarm, we’ll have enough time to get in and out before they’re discovered.”

Neil nodded, shivering in the cold air. Winter had taken hold of the city, a thin dusting of snow mixing with the ash on the streets to make a grey sludge. The palace felt _wrong._ Oppressive and unassailable.

Andrew sat on the ledge cross legged, a contemplative expression on his face. He wasn’t coming with them of course; he simply couldn’t move fast enough to keep up with two Mistborn. Neil got the impression that if he could find a good enough reason, he’d come along anyway.

“There’s the new guards,” Kevin said. “Ready?”

Neil let out a heavy breath and nodded, reaching for his sash, where his spare metals were tucked. He downed another vial, adding to the wealth of metals in his reserves. He burned tin and pewter, his senses coming alive, his muscles charged with strength.

The guards spoke briefly before the new pair took their post and the old trotted off. Kevin stepped to the edge of the roof, dropping a coin at his feet. The mists drew in closer to him as he burned his metals, mingling with the long strips of his cloak.

He jumped, Pushing off the coin and shooting into the air. Neil watched him soar until he landed on one of the spires, holding onto the metal tip. Neil rubbed his icy hands together and prepared to follow.

“Neil,” Andrew said, and he froze, twisting to stare at him. His expression was serious as he met Neil’s gaze. “Bring him back alive.”

It should’ve been absurd. Kevin had nearly two years experience with Allomancy, and years of hazekiller training before that. Neil was a kitten next to him. But he nodded anyway, knowing what Andrew meant. _Protect him when I can’t._

“I will,” he promised, and launched himself into the darkness.

He Pulled against the metal spire and flared pewter as he landed with a jolt, catching hold of the tiles just below Kevin. His metals burned hot in his stomach, warming him.

“I’ll take the one in the guardhouse,” Kevin said. “On my mark.”

Neil shifted, holding the tile with one hand so he could lean back and study the guards below. The one on lookout scanned the large plaza, but his eyes rarely strayed upwards.

“Go,” Kevin whispered, and Neil released the spire, dropping towards the guard. He Pulled lightly against his armour to guide him and hit the ground directly behind him.

“What—” the man said, starting to turn, but Neil seized him, wrapping an arm around his neck and constricting his airflow. Kevin hit the ground a second later, vanishing into the guardhouse in a swirl of mist.

The guard struggled against Neil’s hold, but he couldn’t fight against Neil’s pewter-enhanced strength. Neil dragged him deeper into the shadows, waiting for him to go limp. He dropped the unconscious body on the cobbles and unwrapped a rope from his waist, binding the man’s wrists and gagging him.

It would be safer to kill them, but they’d agreed not to if they could help it. These men were skaa. Skaa that had sold out to the Lord Ruler, yes, but people would do desperate things to feed their families. Neil couldn’t begrudge them their choices.

He dragged the bound guard into the guardhouse and found Kevin in a similar state. They hid the guards under the table and Kevin waved Neil to the gate. He knelt, inspecting the lock with a keen eye.

“Can you pick it?” Kevin whispered. Neil shot him an insulted look, drawing out his picks and getting to work.

A minute later the lock snicked open and Neil cracked the door open, peering in. The hallway beyond was empty.

“Are you burning copper?” Kevin asked as they slipped inside.

“I have been since we left the shop,” Neil said, irritated by the question. He wasn’t _stupid._ Between the ability to hide from Seekers and to shield him from emotional meddling, he burnt copper nearly all the time.

Kevin shot him a glare and took the lead, winding through the hallways following his memorized route. Neil shivered as they passed stone walls adorned with engraved metal plates, all too familiar from childhood visits to the palace. It was as bleak as he remembered. The palace itself felt heavy, like the weight of all that stone would crush them.

“Hide,” Kevin hissed, backing away from a corner. Neil ducked into the nearest room, hunkering behind the door as the clunking footsteps of a guard patrol passed by. He counted to a hundred after the footsteps faded and crept back into the hallway.

Kevin was waiting, expression impatient. Neil followed him wordlessly, slipping into the corridor on silent feet.

He came to a halt as they reached an ornate door, twice as high as a man. A small servants’ entrance was disguised in the gilding to the side and Kevin paused with his hand on the doorknob, glancing back at Neil. “It’s just beyond the next chamber,” he whispered.

Neil nodded and Kevin braced himself, pushing the door open. They crept into a wide chamber with a domed ceiling. The walls were decorated with murals laced through with silver, each depicting a different image from the Ministry’s holy text. The Lord Ruler featured in most of them, ascending to Godhood in an image sprayed through with light.

At the centre of the chamber was a small building, like a cottage or a hunting lodge. It was covered in wooden engravings, oddly warm considering the cold, metallic décor elsewhere in the palace.

“This is it?” Neil whispered. The room reverberated with the soft sound, the dome reflecting the noise back to them.

Kevin nodded and strode forward. Neil’s skin crawled as they approached the small building, eyes shooting side to side. His cloak felt out of place and conspicuous here, out of the mists.

Kevin reached for the doorknob and a glint in the darkness caught Neil’s eye. He reacted without thinking, throwing his weight into Kevin to knock him aside. “What are you—”

The door swung open fully and a hand caught Neil by the throat, lifting him clean off his feet. He choked, flaring pewter and grabbing at the hand at his neck.

It didn’t yield. Spots filled Neil’s vision, but not so much that he couldn’t see the creature facing him. A Steel Inquisitor.

Where its eyes should have been, two massive spikes were hammered straight through its skull. Its lips were curled into a gleeful grin as it crushed Neil’s throat. Obligator tattoos covered its entire bald head.

“Gotcha,” it said. Darkness closed in on Neil’s peripherals. Without pewter, his throat would’ve already collapsed, but he wouldn’t last much longer.

_Never fight an Inquisitor,_ his mother had warned him. _But if you do, go for the spikes._

He fumbled, reaching his hand out to paw at the creature’s face. It laughed at his weak resistance until he felt metal under his fingers.

He wrenched with all his strength, kicking out against the Inquisitors torso. It shrieked, a horrid noise, releasing his throat. He slammed into the ground, the bloody spike clutched in one fist.

Colour flashed into his vision, so bright it was stunning. He clawed at the ground and got to his knees, seeking Kevin.

His duelling cane was drawn and he faced down two more Inquisitors that had appeared out of the wings. “Neil!” he bellowed, cracking the cane against one Inquisitors skull with enough force to splinter the wood. He ducked just in time for a slender obsidian axe to swing through the air where his head would have been.

“Kev—”

A hand grabbed his ankle, yanking him back. Neil yelped, twisting. The Inquisitor’s face was contorted, blood soaking one half of its face. The hole where its eye-spike should have been gaped open, the ragged skin pulsing with blood.

Panic clawed its way up Neil’s throat. How was it not dead?

“Kevin,” he screamed, yanking his coin pouch off his belt. “Run!”

“Neil—”

He hurled the coin pouch towards Kevin. Kevin’s hand reached out as if to catch it, but Neil Pushed it, flaring steel so the pouch hit Kevin’s chest full force.

He jerked backwards, flying out of reach of the Inquisitors with the coin pouch pushing him. He hit the doors with a _thud._ They swung open, launching him out of the chamber.

A scraping noise behind Neil made him flinch. He didn’t have time to worry about whether or not Kevin got away, because the Inquisitor was drawing an obsidian dagger from its belt.

Neil kicked out with his free foot, catching its bloody eye socket. It snarled in pain, giving Neil just enough time to wrench his foot free and scramble to his feet.

One of the other Inquisitors had followed Kevin, but the third faced Neil and the wounded one, his face familiar under the tangled web of tattoos, an obsidian axe held easily in one hand. Romero Malcolm.

Neil threw himself to the side, Pushing off a candelabrum to get airborne. Romero scoffed, lurching into the air as well. Neil Pushed the bloody spike towards him, but he met it with a Push of his own.

Neil shot backwards, Romero’s Push translating through the spike, vastly more powerful than his own. He hit the wall, grunted, and Pulled against a metal window frame in the dome. He swung upwards in an arc, his weight pulling him down so he hit the dome just a little below the window.

A swarm of blue lines activated in his steel-sight behind him and he reacted instinctively, Pushing against them. It crushed him against the arching ceiling and he twisted to see a handful of spiky projectiles hovering in midair, trapped between his and Romero’s Pushes.

He grit his teeth, reaching upwards until his fingers met the frame of the window. The stained glass was rippled and smooth to his touch.

Pewter flared in his stomach and he slammed his fist against the glass. It shattered, raining blue shards down towards the floor. He seized the edge, heedless of the fragments slicing into his palm, and squirmed through the narrow gap. His mistcloak snagged and tore against the glass, but it cushioned him from the worst of it.

He staggered to his feet on the outside of the sloping dome. He could hear Romero shouting in fury inside. Kevin. Where was Kevin?

He burned bronze without thinking, but of course Kevin would be burning copper, making him invisible. Neil’s chest tightened. He promised to get Kevin out.

The window frame shuddered and twisted, bursting out into the night. Neil slipped, sliding down the dome as Romero clawed his way through the gap, his grey robes tearing against the broken glass. Neil Pulled against a metal spire, lurching into the air and away from the dome.

The mist wound around him, dampening his view of the Inquisitor behind him. He leapt and twisted between the towers, using any anchors he could find to fling himself further from the dome.

He dropped into a gap, panting. Copper was burning in his stomach, and there was no metal on his person. There was no way Romero could find him. He had to find Kevin, but he couldn’t return to the rooftop where Andrew was; he wouldn’t be able to flee an Inquisitor like Neil or Kevin could.

He hunkered down. The mists swirled in thick, obscuring curtains. No matter where he ran, he might run into an Inquisitor. It was impossible to know where they’d gone. He burnt bronze again in desperation, hoping they were lax, but he could feel none of the characteristic pulses that indicated Allomancy.

He flared bronze, trying to extend his range, stoking the flame in his chest higher and higher. The world stayed smooth and quiet.

Until—a faint pulse, barely a ripple. Like a breeze passing through. But it wasn’t distant—it was—

He dove, rolling aside just as an obsidian axe swung downwards, crashing into the stone where he’d been crouching. Romero laughed, an insane, terrifying sound, and a choked scream tore from Neil’s chest.

He scrambled away, Pulling against a distant spire to get airborne. Romero was faster, cutting ahead of him with his axe raised.

Neil spun to the side, Pushing off a window frame. The mists curled towards him, running just next to his skin. He ricocheted between the spires, Romero barely half a step behind.

He was just so powerful. Neil ripped his earring out, the only weapon he had left, and shot it towards Romero. It ripped through the air, leaving a trail of disturbed mist in its wake, and burrowed straight through Romero’s skull and out the back.

Romero faltered, his jump flagging, and he hit a spire heavily, holding on with one hand. Neil Pulled the earring back towards him, catching the bloody thing in his fist.

Before he could feel any triumph, Romero lurched back into the air, heedless of the bloody head wound that should have killed him. Neil closed his hand so Romero couldn’t Pull on his earring and leapt away. 

Escape was the only option. He couldn’t fight an Inquisitor; he could barely hold his own against Kevin most nights. His metals flared in his stomach, so hot he could barely feel the chill of the air. The world around him was limned in blue, every tiny speck of metal attached to a thread leading back to him. He moved by instinct, Pushing and Pulling off of distant anchors, weaving between the mass of spires.

Romero cursed, falling behind. His incredible speed couldn’t match Neil’s agility. A thrill rose in his chest. The mists clung to his skin, tangling with his cloak. It was almost alive, chasing him through the night, attracted by his Allomancy.

He spun, swirling through the night above Kredik Shaw like a ghost. His steel-sight brightened, shining, his metals burning impossibly high in his stomach. Romero flew above the spires, his grey robes flapping in the wind. The mists seemed to push _away_ from him, like they could sense his unnaturalness.

Neil inhaled a lungful of mist, his fear melting away. The mists were _his_. He belonged here. He could almost see faint steel-lines leading to Romero’s eye spikes, too flimsy to Push against. He shouldn’t be able to. Kevin swore Allomancy couldn’t affect metal piercing the body.

Power surged through him. Romero fell further and further behind, unable to follow Neil. He spun, jubilant, strength coursing through his muscles.

The mists drew back and he lurched in shock. Something _hit_ him, an extended impact that threw him aside.

The roof of the palace raced up to meet him and he landed with a crunch. Pain lanced through his body belatedly, eating through his side. A scream caught in his chest, unable to find enough air to escape. Something hot and wet dripped down his side.

An Inquisitor landed beside him, an expression of twisted hatred on its face. The hole where Neil had torn out its eye-spike was scabbed over like a wound weeks, not minutes, old. A bloodied axe hung in its hand.

Neil’s hand found the gash in his side. Too deep. He flared pewter to stay conscious, but he could feel his insides pulsing. Something important had been severed.

He clawed at the ground, trying to pull himself further away from the Inquisitor. It raised its axe, thick droplets of blood dripping onto Neil’s face. Blackness closed in on his vision.

He closed his eyes, slumping against the tile. Agony consumed his whole body, consciousness wavering. He heard a thud and a scuffle, then hands slid under his body, muscular arms cradling him like a child.

Something heavy wrapped around his wounded side and he whimpered. The arms only shifted, holding him firmly and securely, too gentle to be an Inquisitor.

His words got caught, gummy and thick with blood. _Andrew?_ He mumbled, peeling his eyelids open.

“Shh,” Abby whispered. “Shh.”

She hefted him in too-muscular arms and he lost hold of time.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for vague allusions to andrews backstory/sexual abuse

 Neil woke like the ash fell—slowly, but inevitably. Everything hurt. His mother must have beaten him again, and he wondered what stupid thing he’d done to earn her ire this time.

The pain rose, though. He grimaced, trying to shift off of his aching body, but no matter how he moved something new sparked. This was worse than anything his mother had ever done; she needed him mobile.

“Easy there,” a voice said, a hand falling on his shoulder. Neil’s eyes shot open, flinching away from the touch.

Nicky held his hands up in a pacifying gesture. “Gently now. You've been out for almost two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” Neil asked, his chest tightening. His thoughts ran back to the fight against the Inquisitors. He clawed at his shirt, feeling thick bandages encasing his ribcage. His chest heaved, pulling at something deep inside his gut. “Kevin—”

“Kevin’s fine. You got hit pretty bad with an axe, though,” Nicky explained. “Abby patched you up.”

Neil breathed a sigh of relief before his eyes shot open in memory. “Abby! I need to talk to her.”

“Why—never mind, I'll get her. Just drink this first, kay? It’s got pewter in it. You've been burning it in your sleep, thank the Lord Ruler, but we don't know what'll happen if you run out.”

Neil reached for the cup, but his fingers were too clumsy to hold it. Nicky slid his hand around the back of his head, supporting him while he helped him drink the lukewarm mixture.

“Wow,” Nicky said. “Your eyes are really bright.”

Neil flinched, spilling the last of the drink on his chest. His eye drops had worn out in his sleep.

“It’s okay!” Nicky said quickly. “Blue eyes are distinctive, I get it. But we're your crew. We won't report you to the obligators.”

Neil turned away, facing the wall as he tried to calm his breathing. “Sorry,” Nicky said, sounding miserable. “I'll go fetch Abby, okay?”

Neil nodded and heard Nicky’s retreating footsteps without looking. He tugged at his hair, pulling it in front of his eyes. Someone had washed it out in his sleep, leaving it a soft reddish-brown. He shuddered in revulsion, pushing it out of his eyes so he didn’t have to contemplate the colour. For as long as he’d known him, his father had worn the shaved head of an obligator, but Mary had been determined to keep Neil’s appearance as dull as possible. It was much easier to find a red-haired, blue-eyed boy in the underground than a mousy skaa urchin.

Abby’s soft, measured tread entered the room, pulling him from his dire thoughts.

“May I check your bandages?” she asked.

“You killed an Inquisitor.”

He turned his head and watched her sit, posture as prim and proper as always. A set of wire-rimmed spectacles sat on her nose. “Not quite. I merely distracted it. Fortunately, it was already too wounded by your fight to provide much resistance.”

“You're Mistborn.”

A faint smile curled her lips. “A Mistborn for six months, and already so knowledgeable about the world.”

It was the closest to sarcasm Neil had ever heard a Terris steward get. He eyed her suspiciously. She was covered in metal jewellery. That should've been a disadvantage in fighting an Allomancer.

Finally, he asked, “Are there other things than Allomancy?”

“A much better question. I am something...else.”

“What?”

She stayed quiet for a moment. “It is a very precious secret you ask for. Only David knows the full extent of my abilities.”

Neil said nothing, just watched her, waiting.

She sighed. “I suppose you need a few details, after what occurred. I am a Feruchemist. It is a skill exclusive to the Terris bloodline, much like Allomancy is limited to those of noble blood. The Lord Ruler believes he eradicated it centuries ago. If word gets out that there are those of us still living, it would go very poorly for the Terris people.”

Neil ignored that veiled warning. “Why is he so determined to get rid of you?”

“Because he fears us,” she said. “Allomancy, he understands. Feruchemist talents lie elsewhere.”

“Like what?”

Abby pursed her lips, falling silent again.

“You made yourself stronger,” he said. “You carried me.”

“Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “Feruchemy differs from Allomancy in that it visibly affects the body. I was able to draw on stored strength, making me much larger and stronger than I normally am.

“I can’t draw on the power of metals, like you can. I…store things. For later. Each of my metalminds—” she touched one of the bracelets on her wrist “—contains a different attribute. Much like Allomancy, which metal it is made of determines what I can store there. Some are similar to Allomancy, some are more unique.”

“That’s why you wear so much jewellery.”

She nodded. “The Lord Ruler once tried to ban the Terris people from ever touching metal, because we need to be in contact with it to tap our reserves. But it was simply too impractical.”

Neil mulled that over. “What else can you store?”

Abby eyed him. “I really think—”

“Eyesight,” he said, perking up. “You needed good eyesight to find me in the mist. That’s why you’re using spectacles now.”

She sighed. “Yes. I used up a great deal of my reserve to find you. In order to refill my metalmind, I need to spend some time with weakened eyesight. A balance. We can store many things in this way. Health, weight, youth—”

“Youth?” Neil said, sitting up so fast his head spun. Abby caught him as he swayed. “You can make yourself younger?”

“Not really. Feruchemists draw power from their own bodies, not the metals they use. In order to spend a few weeks looking and feeling young, I must spend a few weeks looking and feeling old. It is mostly only useful for disguises.”

Neil nodded vaguely, but his thoughts were racing ahead. “If he fears you enough to try and eradicate you, that gives us an edge. With two Mistborn and you—”

“Peace, Neil. I am no warrior.”

“You fought the Inquisitor.”

“I have no training. I spent my entire youth learning how to be a perfect servant.  The night at Kredik Shaw I made myself very strong and hit the Inquisitor. There was no skill involved.”

“You could learn,” Neil argued. “You said your abilities are different. Maybe one of them is actually capable of fighting him.”

“He doesn’t fear us for our fighting prowess, formidable as we have the potential to be. It is the other things we can store that he fears. Memories.”

Neil frowned. Abby considered him a moment, then tugged the sleeve of her colourful robe up. A pair of metal bracers encircled her upper arm, a glittery red colour. She ran her fingers over the coils reverently.

“The Terris people are not fighting folk, but we found our ways to resist. When it became apparent that the Lord Ruler would stop at nothing to eradicate us, we went underground and formed the Order of the Keepers. Each of us stores all of our collective knowledge in our copperminds. Farming, governance, religion; we have collected every bit of wisdom the Lord Ruler has tried to suppress in the hope that one day we will be able to share it once again.”

She lowered her hand. “When I was young, one of the elders of the Keepers recited all of it to me, to be stored. We can’t share our metalminds, you see. No one else can use my reserves.”

”So you know all of history,” Neil marvelled. “Every bit of it.”

She shook her head. “The Keepers know a great deal, but more still has been lost to the Lord Ruler’s campaigns. And in a way we are both the most knowledgeable and the most ignorant of people, because in order to store memories we must put it elsewhere and therefore forget them. We can draw them out, however, when they are needed.”

“The Lord Ruler fears knowledge,” Neil said. “Why?”

“Because it is harder to resist when you don’t know another way. Three centuries after the Lord Ruler’s Ascension, even the most stubborn of nations had fallen. But the religions kept fighting for centuries longer. Because people _believed._ ”

“Renee’s necklace,” Neil said, remembering the little wooden pendant Renee wore. “You gave it to her. Are you saying it belongs to some dead religion?”

“Is it truly dead if someone still believes in it? We once had many beliefs, many dreams. The Keepers will return that to mankind, after the Lord Ruler falls.”

Neil fell silent, trying to wrap his head around the world she described. It seemed strange, unnatural. Like a night without mists.

“I must ask again,” Abby said softly, “that you keep this in the strictest of confidence. The Keepers have already expressed their disapproval for my involvement in the rebellion; they believe I will expose our entire organization. They are willing to keep humanity’s knowledge for the day we are once again free, but are unwilling to actively seek that day.”

“Why did you join, then?”

“Hope,” she whispered. Her hand disappeared into her voluminous robe and removed a small piece of paper, handing it to Neil. The paper was soft and well worn, the creases showing white threads where it had been folded. Neil opened it carefully, feeling like he held something incredibly delicate.

A small, hand drawn image bloomed across the page. It was a plant, but like none Neil had ever seen. Its narrow stem was green, instead of the usual brown, and it had a strange collection of brightly coloured leaves at the top.

“What is it?” Neil asked in confusion.

“It was called a flower. Before the Ascension, many plants used to bear them. We have accounts from those days describing fertile green fields, with flowers in every colour imaginable.”

Neil stared at the strange image, trying to picture that. It sounded absurd. Plants were brown; the idea of them being green was ridiculous. Some nobles managed to breed plants with yellow or reddish leaves, for ornamentation, but they were fragile things, unable to cope with the harsh ashfalls.

“Killing the Lord Ruler won’t bring these back,” he said finally.

“Perhaps,” Abby said. “But I would rather chase a dream than waste away remembering a time long past.”

Neil stared at the picture for a minute longer, before awkwardly holding it out to her.

She shook her head. “Keep it. And remember that there are still things to believe in.”

Neil held his hand out a moment longer, but when she made no move to take it reluctantly retracted his arm. He held the paper carefully, like it might tear apart in his hands. Another dream destroyed.

“Now,” Abby said, sounding a bit more of her usual self. “Let me see your bandages.”

\---

Over the next few days Neil was confined to his bed. Nearly all of the crewmembers came to visit, if only to verify that he was still alive, with one notable exception.

“Well, he blames himself,” Matt said, around a mouthful of fruit. A basket of exotics from Allison sat on the side table, enticing and multi-coloured. “It being his idea that got you hurt.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Neil huffed. “We both got out alive. I’m fine.”

“Your insides are held together with spit and twine,” Dan said dryly. “I wouldn’t call that fine.”

“I have pewter,” Neil retorted. “I could be out training right now.”

“We’re not invincible,” Dan said. “And pewter doesn’t magically heal you—it makes your body better at healing. I think there’s a difference there.”

“And there’s consequences of burning metals too much,” Matt said. “Dependency does…weird things to your body. Best not to rely on it too much.”

Neil muttered mutinously. He wasn’t used to bedrest. He and his mother could never afford it on the run. And his old thieving crew would’ve thrown him out on the street if he wasn’t able to pull his own weight. Having a team around him that actively wanted him to stay idle was deeply strange.

“How were the Caverns?” he asked Dan, a little petulant. She rolled her eyes at his obvious diversion but obliged him.

“Well enough. People like me aren’t meant to be military. Not very good at blindly following orders, you know? But the Caverns were incredible. They looked like cracks in the ground, barely wide enough for one person to climb through. No wonder the Lord Ruler’s never tried to clean them out; ten people could hold that place against an army for weeks with enough supplies.”

“How are the soldiers shaping up?”

“I’m…concerned,” Dan said slowly. “The skaa are learning well, but they’re workers, not fighters. The rebel generals aren’t use to this kind of recruitment success and it’s going to their heads. They’re mostly men, so it’s a big pissing contest up there.”

“Aw babe,” Matt said, putting an arm around her. “Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“And at the moment, true,” Dan said grimly. “I know they have to get used to Yeden as a leader, and I’m happy to be back, but I don’t like trusting people like that with so much power.”

“Yeden’s been hanging around Wymack for nearly six months, though,” Matt pointed out. “Something’s got to rub off.”

“I hope so,” Dan said. “Anyway, Wymack’s given us leave to keep some of the recruits back and train them as strike teams for the Soothing stations. I’m handpicking these ones; I’ve got a pretty good eye for it now.”

Neil listened to them discuss training strategies as the light filtering in the window turned grey and chilly. Eventually Abby came in to give him his daily medicine, and they said their goodbyes and headed off to meet with their newest recruits.

Neil waited until their footsteps had faded to sneak out of his room.

Even with pewter flared, sweat broke out on his palms as he hauled himself up the stairs to the roof. He leaned heavily on the rail, lifting himself gingerly up each step.

The mists leaked inside the open door, reaching for him with smoky tendrils that puffed away when they got too far inside. He slipped into the cool night, breathing a sigh of relief at the crisp air after days trapped in his stuffy room.

He lowered himself to a seated position, facing outwards. The city was soft, blanketed by mists. With a little tin he could make out the distant, hulking mass of Kredik Shaw. He shuddered and released his tin, looking away.

The bell in the square tolled the hour and he settled down to wait.

Regular as the bells, fifteen minutes later the door creaked open, admitting two figures into the mist. Kevin shook his mistcloak out, slinging it over his shoulders. The tassels danced in the air, spun by invisible currents.

Neil coughed pointedly.

Kevin jerked. If he’d been burning tin, the sound would have been as amplified as if Neil had been right at his ear. Andrew’s gaze slid coolly over Neil, neither surprise nor concern disturbing his bored façade.

“You should be—” Kevin began.

“Resting, I know,” Neil said. “Safely locked in my room where you can avoid me.”

“I wasn’t avoiding you.”

Neil gave him a flat look. “Even Andrew looked in.” If only to make a snide remark about Neil’s new look. “It’s been a week and you’ve been conveniently absent the whole time. Matt says it’s guilt, so you can sit down and shut the hell up while I talk.”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Andrew raised a smooth eyebrow, pulling his tobacco from his pocket and tamping it down in his pipe.

Kevin’s face was tense and white, but he stepped stiffly over to Neil and folded himself into a seated position like a disjointed insect. His eyes immediately drifted down to Neil’s wounded side, hidden under a tunic and a thick layer of bandages.

“Stop it,” Neil said. “I’m fine.”

Kevin tore his eyes away. His hand went into his pocket, pulling out a small pouch that clinked faintly. He held it out in offering.

Neil took it with a frown, pulling the strings loose and peeking inside. A small pile of dark metal beads were clustered at the bottom. “Atium,” Kevin said. “The Inquisitor that followed me had some. I managed to Pull it away when it was chasing me.”

Grim satisfaction pulled at Neil’s lips. “Good,” he said, trying to return the bag to Kevin.

He dodged. “Keep it,” he said. “You’re the one that paid the most for it.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Neil said, shoving the bag back into Kevin’s hand. His fingers closed on it, his knuckles going white with the force of his grip.

“You should never have been in that position,” Kevin said. “I was reckless and pushed too hard. We—”

“Stop it,” Neil snapped. “It was a good plan. We were nearly successful.”

“The Inquisitors—”

“Were waiting for us. They knew we were coming.”

“That’s impossible. Only Andrew and I knew the plan before that night.”

“There were three in that room,” Neil said, tone flat. “It was an ambush and we walked right into it.”

Kevin’s eyes darted to Andrew, a sudden flash of panic in his eyes. “You’re not suggesting—”

“No,” Neil said. “It wasn’t one of us. Kevin…I think they can pierce copperclouds.”

“Impossible,” Kevin said again. “No one can—it’s one of the fundamental rules of Allomancy.”

“What if it’s not? No, listen. If you were the Lord Ruler, and you had an advantage like that, wouldn’t you keep it secret? What if what we’ve been taught is _wrong?_ ”

Kevin’s hands twisted into the tassels of his cloak. His voice came out the barest whisper. “Then it wouldn’t have mattered if we got in by stealth. They felt our Allomancy the second we entered the palace.”

Neil nodded tiredly. His body ached for sleep, though he knew it would be slow in coming. “Even so,” Kevin said, shaking his head. “There’s no way to prove it.”

“I did it, too,” Neil whispered.

“What?”

“During the fight. I was hiding on the roof, but I didn’t know where Rom—where the Inquisitor was. But I managed to find him with bronze, even though he was so close he should’ve been inside _my_ coppercloud.”

“No,” Kevin said. “You were stressed and at your limits. You heard the Inquisitor coming and your mind filled in the gaps—”

“I sensed him, Kevin,” Neil snapped. “I can prove it. Andrew, you’re burning copper?”

Andrew’s gaze was trained on him, a strange intensity in his shadowed eyes. Neil took his silence as affirmation and turned back to Kevin. “Burn something,” he ordered.

“Neil, this is—”

“Just do it.”

Kevin huffed, but nodded. Neil reached inside himself, finding his small stash of bronze and burning it. Nothing happened, no echoing pulses in his mind. He ground his teeth in frustration, stoking the flame in his chest up higher, Seeking.

Something gave, like pushing through a heavy curtain. A faint reverberation went through his chest, leading back to Kevin. He focussed for a long second, feeling out the pattern of the beats. “Steel!” he said triumphantly. “You’re burning steel.”

Kevin shook his head in denial. “A lucky guess.”

“Burn something else,” Neil said, a frightened thrill rising in him. The pulses shivered, then changed into a faster beat. “Pewter.”

Kevin looked stunned. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

“We’ve been taught that it’s just a one to one thing,” Neil said. “You burn copper, and bronze can’t find you. But I can sense you if I flare my bronze hard enough. It boosts me just enough to break Andrew’s coppercloud.”

“No, Neil, you don’t understand. You don’t think people haven’t tried? I’ve spent hours trying to break through the coppercloud on the hideout, just to see if it’s possible. Someone would’ve noticed by now if it was just a matter of flaring their metals.”

He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “It must be to do with strength,” Kevin said, racing ahead. “The Inquisitors have always been able to Push harder. They heal too quickly, as well. Even pewter shouldn’t be enough.”

“I’m not an Inquisitor,” Neil said, a heavy weight settling in his chest.

“No, but you’re strong. That much is obvious—you injured one of them! I’ve never _heard_ of anyone managing that before.”

A plume of smoke engulfed Neil and he coughed, waving a hand. Andrew sat next to him, his pipe sending little puffs of smoke to blend into the mists. He reached over to Neil, tugging at his ear.

“What are you doing?” Neil said in irritation. With a yank, Andrew dislodged Neil’s earring. It was a little bent from its journey through the Inquisitors skull, but Abby had found it still clutched in his fist when she brought him back to the hideout. Neil rubbed his sore lobe and huffed at him.

Andrew turned the earring over in his hand, tone bored. “Do it again,” he said.

“Why?” Neil asked, but Kevin stopped him with a hand on his arm, staring at Andrew’s hand.

“Do it,” he said.

Neil frowned, but obediently burned his bronze. He strained, flaring it as high as it would go, but the air felt still and calm. Nothing stirred.

He struggled for another long moment, but the silence refused to lift. He let his bronze go, almost panting with the effort of holding such a high flare. “I can’t feel anything,” he said. It felt like a surrender.

Andrew held out his hand, the small hoop earring unfolded into a straight line in his palm. “What does this look like to you?”

“It’s my—”

“A spike,” Kevin whispered.

Neil recoiled. Pain lanced through his side, burning away his thoughts.

“No,” he whispered. “That can’t be.”

“It makes sense,” Kevin said. “Inquisitors aren’t like regular Mistborn—their powers are granted somehow. It’s long been suspected that the spikes are the source of their power, but the Lord Ruler doesn’t allow study of them—”

“Kevin, _shut up_ ,” Neil bit out. Kevin’s jaw snapped shut. “I’m not one of them. I swear it.”

“But your mother knew something about their abilities,” Andrew said, turning the tiny stud over in his hands. “Either that, or she was uncommonly lucky.”

He held the earring out to Neil, but he flinched away. “I don’t want it.”

Andrew looked unimpressed. “This is no time to get squeamish.”

“They’re unnatural. They’re _monsters_.”

“Perhaps, but it is irrelevant. You have power. Don’t squander it.”

Memories fogged Neil’s mind. Years of living in his father’s household, Inquisitors coming and going by night, tracking blood across the white floors with something like glee. He shook his head, remembering Lola’s wide smile, the way the light shone off her eye-spikes as she told him all the ways you could rip a man to shreds without killing him. “No,” he said.

“Andrew’s right,” Kevin said, pulling himself together faster than Neil could. “We have so few advantages already; we can’t afford to throw one away because of a moral dilemma.”

“Take their power and use it against them,” Andrew said. “Tear them down with their own weapons.”

It was the low burn of his voice that dragged Neil out of the past. He shuddered, staring at the tiny earring like it was a viper. “What if it turns me into one of them?”

Andrew shrugged one shoulder. “Then I will kill you.”

Neil let his breath out in a dire laugh. “Promise?”

Andrew’s eyes glinted in the night. Neil had only half-meant it, but Andrew’s voice was iron certainty. “I swear it.”

A tremor went through Neil, like icy water dripping down his spine. Very carefully, he took the earring from Andrew’s hand and bent it back into a loose circle, pushing it through his earlobe. It hung there innocuously, but Neil couldn’t ignore the cold brush of metal against skin now that he knew.

“Does it only enhance your bronze?” Kevin asked. “Or does it affect the other metals as well? Based on its size I would suspect—”

“Kevin,” Andrew warned.

Kevin stopped. “I need to speak to Renee,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “She knows more about Inquisitors than anyone else.”

Neil caught his arm before he could walk away, digging his fingers in to stop him. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said.

“It could be important.”

“Please,” Neil whispered.

Kevin paused, then finally nodded. “I can share the theory. I won’t bring up your spike.”

Neil shuddered at the word, releasing his arm. “Thank you.”

The mists swirled as he departed, attracted to his still-burning Allomancy. Neil shivered, hugging his arms against his chest. His stitches pulled at his side, a sharp reminder of what Inquisitors were capable of.

Andrew held out the pipe in offering. Neil blinked at him, disoriented. They’d often sat like this after Kevin turned in for the night, sharing smoke and the occasional truth, but it seemed too normal for a night like this. It should be marked by something more than just the ever-present mists.

Gingerly, he took the pipe from Andrew’s fingers and took a draw. The smoke trailed around his mouth, a faint heat biting his tongue. He held it in for a long moment before letting it trickle out his nose into the mists.

The stem was still warm from Andrew’s mouth. Neil took another draw, his eyes drifting back to Andrew.

A jolt went through him. Andrew’s eyes were concentrated and hooded, fixed on Neil. He felt his mouth go dry, the smoke escaping in a rush.

“Kevin told me what happened in the palace,” Andrew said. “You got him out first.”

Neil shrugged, discomfited. “I said I would.”

Andrew reached over and took the pipe from his hand, his movements slow and deliberate. The hairs rose on Neil’s arms.

He felt like he did at the edge of the roof, about to jump. He didn’t know what this was, only that the expression on Andrew’s face made him want to move closer, to lean on him—

_Anyone will betray you, Neil._

He looked away, breaking the strange energy between them. The loss of the pipe’s warmth left him shivery and chilled. His pewter could only do so much to warm him when his body was still recovering from the wound.

The silence strained around them. He should go inside now and rest, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave Andrew’s side.

The words slipped out without his consent. “My mother isn’t dead,” he said.

He didn’t look at Andrew, but he could feel his gaze burning against his skin. “We ran away together,” he continued. “She taught me how to survive. She said that we couldn’t trust anyone. Anyone would betray us. She said even she would, in the end.”

He paused, struggling against a wave of grief he thought he’d buried. “I didn’t believe her, which is why she had to go. She left me here, alone. I guess she finally had enough of trying to protect me.”

His hands curled on his knees, tearing at his trousers with blunt nails. He sensed rather than heard Andrew shift, settling against the cold roof tiles.

“When I was at the orphanage they sometimes loaned us out to different families,” Andrew said, voice dampened in the thick mist. “My last one was a woman who’d only every had one son; she needed more kids to work, or she and her husband would have starved as they got older.”

Neil couldn’t resist. His eyes slipped back to Andrew, watching the faint light of his pipe soften the planes of his face. He faced out into the mists as he continued. “She wanted to be a mother to me, though. She thought we could scrape out a decent life. Only her son wanted to use me for…other things. She knew. She couldn’t avoid it. We lived in a tenement building with a dozen other skaa on the same floor. But without the food tokens he brought in from work, she would starve. So she did nothing.”

A cold, dense knot formed in Neil’s stomach. His mother had threatened to leave him at one of the orphanages often enough that he knew such things were common, of course. To hear it from bored, unflappable Andrew was another thing entirely.

He dropped his eyes. There was nothing to say. Their truths had been aired, shaken out like mouldering old blankets. Nothing would ever wash them clean again.

He burned tin and stared out across the city at Kredik Shaw. Hatred welled inside him, deep and black and abiding. He was no fool; overthrowing the Lord Ruler wouldn’t end the injustices. It would only mean someone else was doling them out.

He wanted to do it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact! because in the canon mistborn universe there are no flowering plants, anything they refer to as a “fruit” is actually just a fancy potato.


	7. Chapter 7

Nicky rubbed ash against his clothes, checking his outfit. This one was ragged and faded, discarded factory overalls and a stained brown shirt. It was a disguise, the same as the suits he wore to the noble balls. He checked himself in the mirror, slipping into his persona. A thief, from one of the large Luthadel crews. Concerned that the tension in the city had rose to a breaking point.

Yes, that would work. He ruffled his hair up so it looked naturally misshapen and rubbed ash into the false beard glued to his face. Even if one of the nobles he danced with at the balls saw him, they’d look right through him now. Nobles didn’t see skaa.

He snuck out of the safehouse and into the growing twilight, slouching to blend in with the beaten down crowds. He wondered if they were in range of one of the Soothing stations. He was no Allomancer; there was nothing to protect him from their secret ministrations.

He shrugged those thoughts off like ill fitting clothes. A regular thief would have no knowledge of the Soothing stations, so neither did he.

He slunk into an alley, dodging a few skinny beggars who clutched at his ankles. He buried the urge to drop a few coins into their hands. It would be out of character, and he couldn’t save them all with coin. He shut that part of him off and found the man he was looking for, seated against a wall with a small travel-sack next to him.

“Hoid,” he said, dropping his voice a note and adding a hint of accent. Eastern provinces, a little slower.

The man unfolded, his brilliant blue eyes peering up at him blearily. “Who is it?” he asked feebly. “Come closer. My eyes…”

Nicky almost cocked an eyebrow at that. A clever move. No skaa informant would last a day on the streets with a disability like that, but it would make the less wary drop their guard if they assumed he couldn’t see them. Nicky had used similar ruses, back when he played the same role.

He stepped a little closer, letting the man think he was fooled. “Theron sends his regards,” he said.

Hoid snorted. “I somehow doubt it. The man has less manners than a pig. What does Theron want of me?”

“He is concerned. The obligators are blaming the thieving crews for the recent attack on House Tekiel. We want to know if they are planning retribution.”

“Good questions,” Hoid said. “Important questions, I’m sure.”

They stared each other down for a long moment before Nicky heaved an impatient sigh, tossing a couple coins at Hoid’s feet. The man scrambled to collect them. Despite his “poor eyesight” he had no trouble finding and counting them, Nicky noted.

“The obligators are preoccupied with the general skaa population,” Hoid said. “They want to make sure the unrest among the nobility doesn’t spread to the slaves. It’s the Inquisitors you should be worried about; they’ve hit twice the usual thieving crews since last month.”

“Ah,” Nicky said, pretending to think. “That’s no good. Wasn’t any of us that hit Tekiel, neither. Theron heard some Hasting’s soldiers bragging about the hit, but it’s us that’s going to deal with the fallout.”

Hoid’s eyes gleamed. Truthfully, Nicky had no clue which House had ordered the hit on House Tekiel. It wasn’t really important. Hoid would think he’d picked up a valuable piece of gossip and spread it, deepening the fissures between the noble Houses. “Isn’t that always the way,” Hoid rasped, all false sympathy.

“And what of the Survivor of Hathsin?” Nicky asked.

“The Survivor?” Hoid laughed. “A myth. The skaa whisper of him, but I would not concern yourself with folktales. There are other forces at work here.”

Nicky glanced at him sharply. He knew a hook when he heard one; Hoid had information he wanted to sell. “Well?” he demanded. “Out with it.”

Hoid merely watched him with an expectant smile on his lips. “Bah,” he snapped, thrusting a hand into his pocket and tossing another coin at him.

Hoid caught it, vanishing it into his ragged robes. “There’s been a skaa uprising,” he said. “Ministry’s trying to keep it hush-hush, but I’ve got my sources. An army of skaa struck the Holstep Garrison just north of here. They’re sending out the Luthadel Garrison to clean it up.”

Nicky’s heart seized. It wasn’t time for them to strike yet! Why—

He barely managed to stay in character. “Ridiculous. Give me my coin back, if all you’re going to tell me is rumours and lies. The skaa don’t form armies.”

“Put eyes on the Garrison, my friend. You’ll see I’m right; they’re mobilising as we speak. The skaa don’t stand a chance.”

“Absurd,” Nicky said, shaking his head. “Theron will want to confirm this. If you have lied—”

“I would never lie to such a valuable customer,” Hoid said smoothly.

“Don’t try to flatter me, beggar,” Nicky said, spinning on his heels. “You will hear from us.”

Hoid’s response was lost in the rushing of blood in his ears. He barely made it around the corner before breaking into a sprint, heedless of the eyes he drew.

Yeden had taken the army out of the Caverns before the prescribed time. And if he was caught—

The entire crew was compromised.

\---

Neil Pushed the coin pouch away from him, stepping aside and Pulling it back, carefully trying to manipulate it between chimneys. It was tough to do; Allomancy only worked in straight lines, so he had to keep his body on the right angle to Push it.

It pinged off a chimney, flipping and hitting the rooftop. Neil ground his teeth.

“Again,” Kevin ordered.

“This is pointless,” Neil said sullenly. “I need to practice jumping, not just standing around Pushing things.”

_“_ Precision is an important skill,” Kevin said. “Too many Mistborn neglect it in favour of brute force. And you can’t risk injuring yourself again.”

“I’m _fine,”_ Neil snapped. “My side hasn’t hurt in weeks. Abby already cleared me.”

“Well I haven’t,” Kevin shot back.

“It’s been two months! How long are you planning on keeping me grounded?”

“Until I’m satisfied you won’t kill yourself with your own stupidity.”

Neil drew breath to shout at him, or maybe to defy his orders and leap into the mists regardless, but he didn’t have a chance. Matt burst through the door on the roof, eyes wild.

“Get inside,” he hissed.

“What?” Kevin demanded.

“There’s no time! Get inside now!”

The urgency in his voice kicked Neil into motion. He spun, finding Andrew in the concealing mists. He was on his feet, already moving to Kevin’s side.

Neil followed on Matt’s heels, heading into the dark building. Pewter lightened his steps as they ran down the stairs, not stopping till the reached the main floor.

“What is this about?” Kevin whispered, right behind Neil.

Matt pulled at a loose board, opening a bolthole Neil hadn’t even known existed. “The army’s been exposed. Wymack’s sending us all into hiding, _now._ ”

\---

Neil paced the tiny safe room, body itching for action. The crew lay about in varying states of slumber and insomnia. After two weeks in the cramped bunker, tensions were running at an all time high. Only Nicky had been allowed out to gather information. Neil had offered to follow him for protection, but he’d been vetoed. Inquisitors were crawling all over the city, and they knew his face after their disastrous infiltration of the palace.

The news was bad. The Garrison had caught up to their army before it could disappear back into the Caverns. Nicky’s sources said it’d been a slaughter. Seven thousand skaa, dead in a matter of hours.

Dan’s impotent rage had broken clods of mud off the walls. Even Allison was stunned to silence. She’d spent the better part of the last eight months recruiting that army, all to have it stripped away in a matter of moments.

Yeden was dead, executed with the remaining generals on the battlefield. How much he told the Garrison before he died was anyone’s guess.

Neil ground his teeth. It had been inevitable. The plan had to fail eventually. He’d only just started to believe in it, and then the world pulled the rug out from under his feet again.

Except he wasn’t some ragged street urchin anymore. He was a bloody _Mistborn._

He should be able to do something about it.

A soft patter of knocks alerted them to Nicky’s return. Matt, currently guarding the door, carefully unlocked it, letting Nicky into the dim chamber.

“What news?” Wymack asked, sitting up from his cot. Heads rose around the room, the faint noise waking everyone. Nerves were too fraught for deep sleep.

Nicky rubbed his arms. He was dirty and mussed, shrinking into his own body the way only a skaa raised on the streets could. “The Lord Ruler’s called for executions,” he whispered.

“When?”

“Noon, today.”

Wymack nodded, climbing to his feet. “We’re going.”

“But Coach—” Kevin said, the whites of his eyes flashing.

“Those people are going to die because of what we did,” Wymack said grimly. “The least we can do is witness their passing. Get up.”

\---

The crew huddled together on the rooftop, mood solemn. Only Andrew stood apart, unaffected by the collapse of their plan. Even Neil hung closer to the others than normal, watching faint specks of ash float down towards the massive crowd. It extended so far that the streets adjacent to the square were still packed solid. Every skaa in the city was called to witness the executions, and even if most of them were too far away to see the raised fountain at the centre of the square, a day out of the factories was worth it to most.

A disturbance moved like a ripple through one side of the square, and the already packed skaa somehow condensed even more, squeezing so tight bodies were indistinguishable from one another. A slim corridor opened as a train of wheeled cages made their way up the cobbles, led by two Steel Inquisitors. A third strode behind, followed by a crowd of obligators.

Neil had attended such executions as a child. He knew how it went. If the Lord Ruler couldn’t get a hold of the people responsible for an uprising he sentenced a random group of skaa, a warning to any fools that would be brave enough to try again. His crew was safe around him, shaken but untouched.

The obligators peeled away, congregating at the base of the stands where the nobles lounged. The cages rolled out until they surrounded the fountain. Armed guards stood beside them, not that the skaa made any move to free the prisoners. “If they just fought back,” Dan murmured helplessly. “Not even the Garrison could put down a million skaa.”

“But they could kill thousands,” Wymack said, hands clasped behind his back, posture military. “Their lives might be miserable, but those skaa are still alive. They’re not willing to throw that away.”

Renee squeezed Dan’s shoulder, expression grim. The three Inquisitors clustered next to the fountain and a soldier opened one of the cages, leading several prisoners forward, prodded by guards with spears.

Allison gasped softly. “No,” she whispered, leaning forward.

“What?” Wymack said, voice sharp.

“ _Seth_.”

Neil grabbed the railing, burning tin. The Inquisitors came into sharp focus, the spikes where their eyes should be glinting in the sunlight. Only a few feet in front of them, a prisoner struggled against his bonds, shouting curses that could nearly be discerned with Neil’s tin-enhanced hearing.

Kevin cursed. “It’s him. How did they know? He hasn’t worked with us for months.”

“They must have caught our trail from an old job,” Wymack said, eyes fierce and desperate as he clutched the rail. Seth had been part of his original team; they hadn’t been close, but Wymack was too sentimental to let that get in the way.

“Seth, no,” Allison breathed. “We have to—we have to get him out—he never agreed—”

“There’s three Inquisitors down there!” Kevin protested. “We’d never get him out alive.”

“No!” Allison snarled. “He’s not allowed to fucking die. He can’t—”

“There’s nothing we can do!”

Neil’s eyes caught on a blood-red robe, at the forefront of the obligator contingent. A strange calm settled over him, more potent than any Soothing. “Yes, there is,” he said.

“What?”

“We give them something they want more.”

Only Andrew realized what was about to happen. He lunged towards Neil, but it was too late. He grabbed the railing and vaulted over it, Pushing himself into the open air.

He soared.

Gasps and pointing fingers followed him through the sky. He started to fall into the crowd and found a few anchors, belt buckles and coins, and launched himself forward, hurtling towards the fountain. He burned iron, locking on the fountain and Pulling himself towards the metal structure.

The soldier restraining Seth had barely turned to face the commotion when Neil slammed into him feet first, tumbling forward and coming to his feet in one motion. He seized the man’s fallen spear from the ground, knocking the metal head off and spinning to slash through Seth’s bindings.

“You—” Seth said, his expression stunned.

“Run,” Neil hissed, shoving the spearhead into his hands. There was no more he could do for him. He whirled, grasping the broken spear like a staff and facing down the three Inquisitors.

The smallest of the three snorted in disdain. “This is what the rebellion sends? He is barely a child.”

Neil set his bare feet against the cobbles. “Long time, no see, Lola,” he said, voice low.

“Oh,” she said, lifting her head, eye-spikes reflecting the red sunlight. “Oh, how unexpected. Junior, is that you?”

Neil said nothing, but shouts rose behind him. Seth must have gotten a hold of a weapon, because there was—there were a lot of voices. He couldn’t afford to look away from the Inquisitors to find out what was happening. “Nathaniel, it _is_ you. And we all thought you starved.”

“You should be so lucky,” he said.

Lola tutted. “Still haven’t learned any manners, I see. Jackson, Romero, take him.”

The two Inquisitors moved forward as one, trying to flank him. Neil didn’t give them a chance. He yanked on the fountain behind Lola, lurching towards her, swinging the staff as he leapt into the air.

She dodged unnaturally fast, and Neil felt a Push on his coin pouch, knocking his jump askew. He released his Pull, dropping to land on the rim of the fountain. He seized his coin pouch and tore it in half, the coins spraying out in front of him. He shot them towards the three Inquisitors, who deflected them easily. He launched himself upwards, flying above the returning coins, and saw what had been happening behind him.

The skaa.

The skaa were _fighting back_.

The closest layers of the crowd were locked in fierce conflict with the guards. Several had seized spears and were slashing recklessly at the guards, sheer numbers piling on to crush them. The prisoners rattled at the cages, helpless. Bodies already lay underfoot, and he didn’t have time to seek out Seth. He started to drop, falling behind the protective shadow of the Lord Ruler’s statue. He couldn’t help the skaa fight; he had enough on his hands. But he could do one thing.

He burned steel, seeking out each of the cages. Their steel-lines burned bright and strong. He found the doors and focussed on the latches and hinges, the weak points.

He flared pewter and Pushed outwards against the cages, the combined weight of eight wagons trying to crush him. He screamed, flaring his metals, stoking the flame as high as he could. Several of the wagons shuddered, wheels scraping as they slid a few inches away. His body felt like it would collapse under the pressure, but he kept Pushing outwards, the ring of wagons holding him in place, crushing him.

Something cracked and one door flew backwards, slamming the cage open. He hoped the skaa had the sense to stand clear of the straining doors. Another cracked, hinges askew, and then they were all failing, giving way against Neil’s desperate Push.

He barely reacted in time. Lola came around the statue, obsidian axe swinging. Neil released his Push and threw himself aside, Pushing against the statue and skidding on his back across the cobblestones.

“Pesky little brat,” she snarled, stalking towards him. “Never did know your place.”

“Funny,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I’m right where I belong.”

“At my feet?”

“Inside your guard.”

He swung his broken spear, catching her ankles and knocking her off her feet. He didn’t wait to see if she recovered. He flared pewter, scrambling out of reach and Pushing himself into the air off of a fallen sword.

Jackson and Romero followed him into the air, shooting tiny metal spikes through the air ahead of them. Neil flared steel, lurching above the projectiles, and Pushed them downwards so they fell in a deadly rain. The space around the fountain had emptied already, no skaa or soldier willing to risk getting in the way of a battle between four Allomancers. All but one of the cages were open, and skaa hacked at the last, beating at the wooden supports with stolen swords.

On impulse, Neil found an anchor behind Romero and Jackson, Pulling himself towards them. Romero made a sound of shock, but both reacted quickly, Pushing coins towards him. He shot between them, and the force of their Pushes threw them away from one another. His momentum carried him past the coins and he dropped, landing on top of one of the empty wagons.

Lola was already flying towards him, her obsidian axe poised to strike, robes fluttering around her. He Pushed off the bars of the cage, staying airborne, using steel to cut an erratic path between the bounds of the circle.

Jackson and Romero converged on him, axes in hand. He grit his teeth and yanked hard with iron, lurching out of their grasp again. There was no way he could defeat three Inquisitors, but he didn’t have to. He only had to keep their attention long enough that the prisoners could escape.

\---

“What the hell is he doing?” Wymack bellowed, as Neil shot away from them. Andrew hit the railing hard, arm still outstretched, fingers closing on empty air. The skaa below them erupted in shouts, hands waving and pointing at the tiny figure flying through the air above them.

Andrew couldn’t breathe. The crew was a maelstrom behind him, but he couldn’t hear them. His entire world had narrowed to the Neil’s slender shape, hanging in the air for a moment before slipping down, down, down.

He felt Neil’s impact with the guard like a punch to the gut. “He’s going to get himself killed!” Kevin’s shrill voice cut through the air.

 It was enough to jostle Andrew into action. He whirled on the crew. “Renee,” he snapped. Her black-whorled eyes caught his, deathly serious. “Get down there and pull out whatever prisoners you can. Get them into safe-houses, bury them in the skaa population, I don’t care. Dan—”

“Andrew we can’t just go barging in there,” Dan said desperately. “We have to be reasonable.”

“He will die if you don’t move,” Andrew snarled. “Matt, are any of the army recruits hidden near here?”

Matt looked disoriented but he nodded. “There’s a safe-house—”

“Go there, fetch reinforcements. Allison, put that Soothing to work or we’ll have a full-scale riot on our hands. Coach, get the rest of these idiots to safety. Kevin, with me.”

He didn’t have patience to argue sense into them. He seized Kevin’s arm, dragging him towards the stairs. “What are we—”

“We’re going to fetch Neil,” Andrew growled, hauling Kevin down the stairs. Renee would make them see reason—or she wouldn’t, Andrew didn’t care. The prisoners could all bleed out in the streets. He wouldn’t let Neil die.

He shoved into the crowd, yanking his obsidian knives out to menace his way through, but the skaa were panicking now, half trying to surge towards the fight, half trying to flee. Even Andrew’s knives couldn’t draw their attention in the melee. A few shied away, but more pressed into the open space.

He would never make it in time. Despair yawned inside him, an empty pit, but he pushed forward, slashing out and shoving his way through with his shoulders. “Andrew,” Kevin gasped, yanking on his arm. “Andrew, we can’t make it like this.”

Anger flared inside him, but Kevin wasn’t done. “Hang on,” he said, wrapping his arm around Andrew’s middle. Fury and unbridled panic seized him for a moment, the feeling of a body constricting around his, and then they were airborne, and he choked back a scream. The ground blurred as they lurched through the air above. Andrew grabbed Kevin’s shoulders, clutching him with clawed fingers. They started to slow, their combined weight tugging them downwards, and Kevin hurled another coin down, launching them forward again.

Andrew wanted to close his eyes as the wind whipped past him. It was like falling but a thousand times worse, jerking up and forwards with only Kevin’s arm around him and his own death grip between him and a mortal drop. But he kept his eyes open and was ready when they landed in a gap near the fountain.

They hit hard, tumbling apart. Andrew rolled to his feet, wincing as his whole side flared with pain. Fucking Mistborn, no concept of what life without pewter was like. He sprinted towards the nearest cage, trusting Kevin to recover quickly.

He skidded to a halt beside the empty cage. The door was mangled and bent, like it had been torn out by a beast. Two Inquisitors hovered in the air above, their long robes flapping in the breeze. He couldn’t see Neil.

Kevin’s hand closed on his shoulder and he threw him off reflexively. “Try to lure them away,” Andrew hissed.

“But—”

“I’ll get Neil,” Andrew said, ignoring Kevin’s protests. It was past time for him to grow a spine. Kevin made a mangled noise in Andrew’s ear and he jerked around and spotted what Kevin had. A third Inquisitor strode across the square, a massive invisible force throwing the cage ahead of it into the crowd. Neil stumbled upright as his hiding place flipped over his head, bloody, clutching his side, but still alive.

“ _Now,”_ Andrew hissed, yanking out another obsidian dagger—he’d dropped the first when Kevin decided to launch them into the air.

“Here,” Kevin whispered, shoving a vial into his hand. Andrew nodded and tucked it in his pocket, then grabbed a wooden shield off the ground and set off around the outside of the ring at a dead run. He was painfully aware that he was next to useless in a face-off against an Allomancer, but he could still catch them by surprise.

The two Inquisitors in the air jerked, and Andrew glanced back at Kevin. He stood openly between two cages. To the untrained eye he appeared completely immobile, but Andrew guessed he’d used emotional Allomancy to draw their attention. Scrap bits of metal trembled and started to leap into the air, and then Andrew was rounding another cage, Kevin out of sight.

Where was Neil? He dodged a few remaining soldiers, leaping over a body lying crushed under a broken wagon wheel. _Where was he?_

He skidded past the next cage and spotted the third Inquisitor with its axe raised, back towards him. He didn’t stop to think. He sprinted towards it, spotting the pitiful figure at its feet and feeling a surge of desperation.

If the creature had been less focussed on Neil, it would have heard Andrew’s pounding footsteps, but it merely brought the axe up and Andrew crashed into its back, slamming his obsidian dagger into its side. It clanged off of something hard before sinking in, and the Inquisitor bellowed in pain.

“Andrew,” Neil shouted. “No—”

Andrew wrenched the dagger out, but the Inquisitor didn’t fall. _Damned_ pewter. He wrapped his arms around the creature from behind, getting a hold of its face with one hand and slashing at its neck. He could feel the unnatural cold of one of its eye-spikes under his fingers before it tore away from him, blood gushing from its throat. Even still, it didn’t fall, gripping the wound with one hand and staggering away.

Good enough. He faced Neil. “Can you walk?”

“Andrew—”

He glanced behind him, just enough to see the two Inquisitors still facing off with Kevin in a maelstrom of tiny metal projectiles. He fumbled in his pocket for the vial and grabbed Neil’s shoulder, holding the vial out.

Neil’s hand was shaking too badly to grasp it, so he popped the cork out and poured it into Neil’s mouth like an infant. The sound of his swallow was painful, but a second later his cheeks flushed with colour and his breathing evened out. He must have run out of pewter, the absolute martyr.

 The wounded Inquisitor had vanished, so Andrew pushed to his feet, swinging around to check that Kevin was still alive. He caught Andrew’s eye from across the circle and took his cue, lurching backwards as if pulled by an invisible hook. One of the Inquisitors followed him, but the other paused, turning around.

Neil tried to haul him into the shadows, but the damage was done. The Inquisitor zeroed in on the pair of them and shot towards them.

The Inquisitor’s anchor must not have been directly behind it, because it didn’t fly straight towards them. “Go!” Neil said, shoving Andrew’s arm and scooping up a long, jagged bit of wooden frame from one of the wagons. “You can’t fight him!”

He paused for only a second, but Neil shoved him with pewter-enhanced strength, making him stumble away. “Go!”

He hated that Neil was right, but he wasn’t going to jeopardize him by trying to play hero. He sprinted away and felt a spray of what looked like nails fly past him—Neil must have deflected their trajectory. He caught the fallen obsidian axe and hauled it over his shoulder, wincing a little at the weight on his bruised body.

He ducked behind a cage, sheltering behind the wooden front section, and peeked around it. Neil was in the air again, zipping this way and that too fast to anticipate. The Inquisitor was stronger, but not as quick to change directions. Blood dripped from a wound on Neil’s side. If this turned into a protracted fight, he knew which way it would go. The skaa would have to handle their own escapes.

He dodged between cages, trying to get behind the Inquisitor, but the two were moving too fast. Andrew growled, hating his own helplessness. This cage was no better or worse, strategically, so he stayed still, watching Neil until he was able to catch his eye with a quick gesture.

Neil understood, changing directions so fast Andrew felt second-hand whiplash. He shot over to the opposite side of the square, keeping the Inquisitor between them. Andrew switched the axe to his left hand and drew another dagger, ready to throw if he saw an opening.

A loud scrape drew his attention away for a moment. The metal door of one of the cages leapt into the air. Neil shot sideways and the door swung through the air like it was at the end of an invisible tether. The Inquisitor changed directions in midair, flying past Andrew’s hiding place.

For a moment, all three were lined up; Neil, the cage door, and the Inquisitor. “Neil!” Andrew bellowed, and Neil’s eyes leapt to him, seeing the same thing he did. He lurched to a halt midair, suspended between the metal statue and the steel door.

The Inquisitor wasn’t expecting Neil’s sudden stop, and the door lurched forward and slammed into it. The door flung the Inquisitor through the air until it struck the wagon Andrew hunkered behind, pinning it between the wooden wall and Neil’s Push.

Andrew came out swinging, axe held in a two-handed grip. The blade bit into the creature’s neck and sank into the wood behind with a meaty crunch.

The steel door clanged as Neil released his Push and the Inquisitor’s body dropped to the ground. Its head remained where it was, eye-spikes hammered into the wood behind it, still staring eerily forward.

“He’s dead,” Neil whispered, scrambling over the cobbles to stand beside Andrew, grabbing his arm in a fierce grip. Andrew couldn’t even bring himself to push him away. He wanted to pull Neil into his arms and shake him for being so stupid. He wanted to hold onto him like he might evaporate in a puff of mist. “I can’t believe it. We did it. We killed an Inquisitor.”

“Very well done, _Nathaniel._ ”

The cold voice startled them both. Neil flinched so hard he nearly fell over, and Andrew caught him, digging his fingers into Neil’s arm so that he couldn’t flee without him. He whipped around, spotting an obligator in red robes striding towards them. The man raised his arms as if in an invitation for an embrace, but his smile was all menace.

“I must say, I’m impressed. The old bitch managed to keep more secrets than I ever expected.”

Neil made a choked whimper. Andrew glanced between them, chest contracting at the abject terror in Neil’s eyes. The man stopped a few feet away, still smiling that horrible, rictus grin, and beneath the intricate black whorls of his tattoos Andrew could see the resemblance.

“Nothing to say?” the obligator taunted. “But it’s been so long. Say hello to your father.”

“He’s not yours,” Andrew snapped, and would have struck out with his dagger if all his strength wasn’t required for keeping Neil from collapsing.

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid we haven’t been introduced. Do they still give vermin names where you come from? Never mind, I don’t care. Nathaniel, come here. End this farce.”

“He’s not going anywhere with you,” Andrew snarled. “Neil, snap out of it.”

Neil’s eyes tore away from his father, fixing on Andrew with such desperation his breath caught. “How sweet,” the obligator said, sounding amused. “But we all know how this ends. Nathaniel, now.”

“Stop calling him that,” Andrew said, and something in Neil’s expression fell into place. Neil straightened slowly, his posture rigid but not broken. Andrew kept his grip on Neil’s arm, his eyes only on Neil.

“Nathaniel,” the obligator snapped, and Andrew knew from his sudden urgency that he’d seen the change too.

“Your name is Neil,” he said in a low voice, and Neil nodded.

He made a split-second decision. Neil was still bleeding, and Andrew was bruised and battered. They were in no shape for another fight. The obligator lunged towards them at the same moment Andrew hauled Neil backwards. He didn’t resist, letting Andrew lead him into the throng of skaa, losing themselves in the sheer masses.

Bodies jostled him, sweat and blood pressing against his skin setting off every alarm he had, but Neil was in his grasp and nothing else mattered. They were alive.

Despair dropped on him like weighted blanket. He staggered as all around, skaa flagged, slouching downwards. No clouds crossed the sky, but it felt like the world went shades darker.

“The Lord Ruler,” Neil gasped. Andrew struggled to breath. “Copper.”

His mind caught up to Neil’s a second later and he burned copper, a flood of relief hitting him as his coppercloud flung back the effects of the Lord Ruler’s Soothing. He sucked in air and started forward, trying to move in the same dazed, hopeless shamble as the other skaa. Even with his coppercloud up, he could swear he still felt it, like a distant pressure on his soul.

He was so damn powerful. Kevin and Neil were supposed to face up to that? He’d never seen a Soother take on more than a few dozen people at once. Yet here was the undeniable evidence that the Lord Ruler was Soothing thousands.

Neil nudged him in the direction of a side street and he followed, hanging onto Neil’s arm, the only real thing left in the world. Behind them, the screams began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the biggest plot twist of this whole fic is that seth actually survives it lmao


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> or "Andrew and Neil cuddle and overthrow the bourgeousie"
> 
> warnings for threats of torture and some very brief gore

Neil blinked awake, turning his head into the warmth of a body beside him. He didn’t move, too comfortable to brave shifting his battered body. He and Andrew were hunkered in a tiny safe room behind a bar, where they’d taken shelter in the riot. It was finally quiet outside, the thundering feet of soldiers faded away in the hours they’d been hiding.

Andrew’s arm resettled around him and he let himself sag against Andrew’s side a little more, his face pressed into his shoulder. Andrew had bandaged his wound—saying nothing of the scars revealed in the process—and told him to sleep. There was enough space for them to curl up separately, but Andrew hadn’t let him go once since they’d fled the square.

“Did you sleep?” he mumbled into Andrew’s shirt.

He felt Andrew’s inhalation, wanting nothing more than to sink into his warmth and never resurface. “No,” Andrew said after a long pause.

Neil sighed and pushed himself upright. “You should have told me to move.”

“You needed sleep more than I did.”

Neil frowned, but didn’t argue. His whole body ached, his side a stinging mess. The wound where Lola managed to slash him was too shallow to need stitching, but it ran nearly the whole length of his torso, and he didn’t have much pewter left. He was going to need it to get back to the hideout. “It’s quiet,” he said.

Andrew nodded and slowly removed his arm from Neil’s shoulders, stretching his neck. It made a distinct pop. Neil eased away, his side tingling with heat where they’d been locked together for hours. “We should get back.”

Andrew held his gaze for a long moment, his eyes dark and heavy, before standing and tapping on the trapdoor above them lightly.

Footsteps reverberated through the ceiling until they were right overhead, and the trapdoor lifted an inch. “Everyone still breathing?” a man’s voice asked.

“Just,” Andrew replied, and the trapdoor swung open completely. Neil winced as he climbed the ladder, emerging into the storeroom of a tavern. A skaa man wearing an apron stood to the side, waiting for Andrew to follow.

Andrew brushed off his pants, though they were filthy with ash anyway. “Roland,” he said, nodding to the man as he dropped the trapdoor back in place, scuffing the dirty floors with his feet to disguise the seamlines.

“Anytime. What the hell happened out there?”

Andrew just shook his head, tugging Neil’s sleeve to direct him towards the back exit. He gave the barkeeper a tired nod and kept his pewter on a low burn as they slipped into the streets.

\---

The hideout was deathly silent when they arrived, but it nearly exploded when they staggered into the room. “Neil!” Matt shouted, seizing him and sweeping him into a giant bear-hug. Neil couldn’t suppress a squeak of pain.

“Sorry!” Matt said quickly, setting Neil back on his feet. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Neil said. The entire crew groaned collectively and Neil took that moment to drink in the sight of them. Renee was sporting a bandage on her arm and some colourful bruises on her cheek, and Kevin’s arm was in a splint, but they were all there. Allison and Seth were wrapped up together on a wooden bench, miraculously alive.

“Uh, Neil?” Nicky asked, his mouth turned upwards in a skeptical smile. “Are you wearing Andrew’s shirt?”

“Oh,” Neil said, looking down. “Mine was covered in blood.”

“ _Blood!_ ” Matt, Dan and Nicky yelped simultaneously.

“It wasn’t all mine,” Neil said defensively.

Abby pushed through the crowd, her medicine kit in hand. “Let me look at you,” she said, reaching for him.

“Andrew already bandaged me up,” he said, ducking out of reach. “I ran out of pewter on the way here, though, if anyone—”

Matt was already rummaging in his pockets until he came up with a vial. Neil downed it gratefully, feeling the pewter come alight in his stomach. His aches and pains retreated, his body feeling more solid.

“Thanks,” he said to Matt, but his gaze tracked Andrew as he wove through the room, checking each of his charges for injuries. The other crew members made way for him, but there was something in the way they glanced at him cautiously, something other than the usual wariness.

Neil settled into an offered chair, gratefully accepting a cup of water. “What happened?”

The others fell over themselves to answer, speaking in an incoherent babble.

“—ran down to a safe house and fetched some—”

“—after Andrew and Kevin went charging after your suicidal ass—”

“— _three Inquisitors—”_

“That’s enough,” Wymack’s voice cut through the din. Neil jumped, startled. Wymack sat at the back of the room, arms folded across his broad chest. He hadn’t moved since Neil walked in, but his expression was carefully blank. “I think you owe us an explanation first.”

“I had to do something.”

“Throwing yourself at three Steel Inquisitors is not a plan.”

“I knew they’d be more interested in catching me than chasing a bunch of skaa prisoners,” Neil said, his chest squeezing tightly. He didn’t want to lose these people, wanted to stay with them forever, but they deserved the truth.

“Why?” Nicky asked softly.

Neil swallowed hard, meeting Andrew’s eyes from across the room. “Because the Butcher is my father.”

The room went silent. Neil looked at his hands, dark with ash, and wasn’t sure if the blood caked into the seams of his palms was real or imagined.

Wymack heaved a huge sigh. “Is that all?” he asked, and Neil jerked his head up, mystified. “And here’s me thinking you had some kind of big, dark secret.”

“I—”

“Half the people in this room have scum for parents, Neil. We’re skaa. We’re not going to throw you out on your ass because of your shitty father.”

“I’m sorry,” Neil said, stung. “I should have told you, but I’m not good at trusting people.”

“We’re aware,” Wymack said dryly. “Fine. After you pulled your grand heroic gesture, Renee went in to organize the prisoners. Matt and Dan ran for the nearest army safehouse and came charging back in with as many soldiers as they could gather. Between the three of them they rescued about two dozen prisoners. Kevin managed to lose his tail in the slums and got back here around the same time we did. What happened to the other two Inquisitors?”

“Wounded one, killed the other.”

Matt sat bolt upright. “You _killed_ an Inquisitor?”

“Technically Andrew did,” Neil clarified, and was gratified when the whole crew whipped around to stare at Andrew, who folded his arms impassively from his post at Kevin’s side.

“ _How?_ ”

“Beheaded him,” Neil said. “So what’s our next move?”

The crew shifted uncomfortably, exchanging loaded glances. “Neil,” Dan said carefully. “There is no next move. The army is gone. The plan is dead. Before you arrived, we were making plans to get out of the city.”

“What?” Neil said, surging to his feet. “We can’t give up now! We’re winning!”

“The plan all hinged on the army taking the city. We gave it our best shot. But it’s time to get out while we still can.”

“No!” Neil snapped. “It’s not over.”

“You didn’t see what happened,” Seth interrupted. “After the Lord Ruler arrived, he just started killing people. Left and right, like they were ants. And his Soothing…I thought I was going to die. Like all the hope was gone from the world. You saved my life and…” his throat worked like the words were painful, spitting them out like broken teeth. “And I’m grateful. But there’s no point in surviving that if we’re just going to die now.”

“No,” Neil said, talking fast. “You don’t see it. _The skaa fought back._ We don’t need an army. We have an entire _city.”_

His voice rang in the small room, and all eyes fixed on him. “Even so,” Dan said. “What if it was just a one-time thing? The skaa have never fought before.”

“The skaa don’t fight back because they don’t have a reason. They don’t have hope. Today, they did. We can’t waste that.”

The words left him almost before he thought them, but they felt right, settling somewhere just inside his breastbone and pulsing with quiet heat. He knew better than anyone. He was a runner, not a fighter. But that was before he found the crew, the job, the one thing that might be worth fighting for.

“We’re not leaders,” Nicky said. “They won’t follow us.”

“No,” Neil agreed, raising his eyes to meet Kevin’s. “But they might follow the Survivor.”

Kevin’s eyes flashed. “I’m no hero.”

“None of us are,” Neil said. “We’re just going to have to be enough.”

“It could work,” Renee said softly. All eyes turned to her. “The Garrison is out of the city. The nobility are fractured. The skaa are enflamed. After what happened in the square today…there will be riots. Fires. People will die. Unless their anger is pointed in the right direction.”

“The Soothing stations would have to be taken down,” Allison said. “The skaa need access to their full emotions.”

“The nobility won’t help one another, but we’d need to confine them to their Keeps, or at least drive them out of the city,” Dan said slowly.

“Wait a moment,” Seth said, staring at Allison where she still sat in his arms. “You can’t be serious! After what just happened today?”

Everyone looked to Wymack. His arms were folded over his chest, his eyes hidden under shadows. “We could wait our whole lives and never see another opportunity like this,” he said, voice low, like crackling embers. He raised his head, jaw tense. “If the skaa do rise up, we have to strike.”

Dan swallowed. Nodded. “I’ve got enough soldiers left to strike at the Soothing stations, or the nobility, not both.”

“The hell is a Soothing station?” Seth demanded.

Allison explained, in crisp, exact language. Seth’s face went red with anger.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he asked, looking around. Everyone met his gaze. There had been no discussion, but there didn’t need to be one. They were in this too deep to back out now. Seth cursed. “You’re all fucking insane,” he said. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

“How?” Kevin asked. “You’re one person. We’d need to strike at them all simultaneously.”

“I’m a twixt, aren’t I? I can find you someone. I know all the crews in this city. Find me a big enough bribe and I’ll find you your muscle.”

Wymack nodded slowly. “Does everyone know your roles?”

“We’ve been over the plan a thousand times, Coach,” Nicky said. “We can wing a couple of details.”

“We’ve got two hours till sunset,” Dan said. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it now.”

Wymack looked around the room, meeting each person’s eyes. Neil stared into his dark eyes and lifted his chin, resolute. “Get in here, you lot,” Wymack said, and edge to his voice that Neil couldn’t begin to decipher. They all moved in, even Andrew, leaning in towards each other. It might be their last chance.

Wymack put one hand on Dan’s shoulder and one on Renee’s. “This is it,” he said. “It’s time to show them what we’re made of. There’s no room for doubt, no room for second guesses, and no room for error. This is our night. Seize it with everything you’ve got. Fight because you don’t know how to die quietly. Win because you don’t know how to lose. The Lord Ruler has ruled long enough—it’s time to tear his castle down.”

 ---

Neil watched as the mists formed. They didn’t come from anywhere in particular; they just seemed to grow, slinking into being faster than a natural fog. Warm yellow lights glowed, isolated spots across the city where the mists reflected firelight. The skaa were among the mists tonight.

Most of the crew was already gone, rushing off to organize different factions. As he waited, Nicky exited the hideout, bearing a map that showed the locations of their weapons caches.

Nicky shot him a strained smile. Neil didn’t return it. He was peering warily down the twilit street, catching sight of a few figures rushing through the streets towards them.

A vaguely familiar man with long, wild blond hair broke into a run as he came within regular eyesight. “Nicky!” he shouted.

Nicky froze, the map clutched in too-tight hands. “Erik?”

“Nicky! I was so worried. The skaa are rioting!” The man slowed, staring at Nicky’s plain clothes in confusion. Nicky went deathly still by Neil’s side.

“Nicky what—” Erik’s eyes slid away from Nicky and focussed on Neil. Neil didn’t move, just stared back at him blandly, but he took a step back, eyes frightened. “The Mistborn from the square. Nicky, get away from him, he’s dangerous.”

“Erik…” Nicky whispered, agony and heartbreak shattering the name.

“You’re with him,” Erik said, shaking his head in denial. “Why? What are you doing?”

“Overthrowing the Lord Ruler,” Neil said bluntly, staring at the nobleman with cold eyes. The crew had warned Nicky not to get attached, but he knew that didn’t make this moment easier. Nicky made tiny, strangled noise beside him.

Erik gaped at them. “You’re insane.”

Neil shrugged.

“Nicky, you knew about this?” Erik implored, staring at Nicky like he had the answers, that there had to be some reasonable explanation. Whatever he saw in Nicky’s face, his expression dropped. “So none of it was real.”

“No,” Nicky protested, taking a desperate step forward. “No, I was there for the job, but you weren’t part of the plan. You were never part of the plan.”

It made no difference. Erik’s face had closed off, jaw clenched in anger and grief. “You can’t fight the Lord Ruler. You’re going to get killed.”

Neil heard Nicky’s sharp intake of breath, like he’d been stabbed. For a long moment there was nothing but silence. The mist echoed distantly with the sounds of shouting. The scent of burning torches wafted through the air. Slowly, ever so slowly, Nicky straightened, raising his chin. Grief tightened his jaw, but his posture was proud. “I was born a slave,” he said, voice strong, fists closing at his sides. “But I won’t die one.”

“You’re skaa,” Erik said, incredulous.

“Yes.”

Erik shook his head, backing away.

“Erik, listen to me. This doesn’t have to be skaa against nobility.”

“Shut up.”

“Erik—”

“No!” Erik snapped. “How can I trust a single word you say?”

Nicky didn’t respond, his usually light manner completely swamped under bone-deep sorrow. Erik shook his head. “I hope their deaths are worth it,” he said and turned away, jogging back to his squad of soldiers. The mists closed around them, their footsteps echoing longer than the sight of them.

A shuddering sigh brought Neil’s attention back to Nicky. He’d folded in on himself, his arms hugging his stomach. “I guess that’s the best I could expect, right?” Nicky said, smiling wanly.

“I’m sorry,” Neil said. The words felt inadequate, but they were all he had.

 “Yeah. Thanks,” Nicky said. “Well. I’ve got a job to do. So take care of yourself, okay? See you on the other side.”

“Yeah,” Neil said, and felt an anxious swoop in his stomach as Nicky jogged off. He knew his crew was competent, but he couldn’t help fear creeping in. Nicky vanished around a corner and Neil hoped desperately that it wasn’t the last time he’d see him.

He heard the distinct sound of bare feet against cobbles and turned around just before Kevin reached him. Strips of his mistcloak wafted through the air ahead of him, stirring in the faint breeze. He held out a thick, grey bundle and Neil took it, shaking his mistcloak out and clipping it onto his shoulders. Kevin handed him a few vials of metals and two small pouches.

“What are these?” he asked, indicating the pouches as he tucked the vials safely in his sash.

“Atium,” Kevin said, holding up the smaller of the two. “And the Eleventh Metal.”

Neil closed his hand around the pouches, nodding slowly.

“I couldn’t figure out how it works,” Kevin admitted softly. “It’s safe to burn, but I can’t tell what it does. Perhaps it will respond to the Lord Ruler.”

Neil shook out a couple beads of atium, rolling them around in his palm. Each one was worth a small fortune, and they’d paid in blood the night of their attack on Kredik Shaw. He tossed them into his mouth, swallowing them dry.

Kevin gripped his shoulder. “Neil—”

“I understand,” he said quietly. Kevin’s fingers dug into his skin so hard it was painful. “Nothing we do matters so long as the Lord Ruler lives.”

Kevin’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t deny it. “I should go—”

“You need to lead the skaa,” Neil said. “They won’t follow anyone else.”

He didn’t say the other truth. Kevin was more skilled, but Neil was more powerful. If one of them had to go, and the other had to stay, there was only one logical choice.

There was a harsh sound as Kevin swallowed. Then he abruptly yanked Neil in, wrapping his free arm around his shoulders and thumping his back. Neil didn’t have time to react before Kevin released him.

They stared at each other for a moment. Neither was willing to say good luck, not when they knew that luck couldn’t been counted on. Neil nodded though, gratitude and fear twisting around in his chest till they were indistinguishable. He stepped back, dropped a coin on the ground beneath him, and launched into the air.

From above, the city was aglow. Pockets of firelight shone where the skaa were gathered. Somewhere down there, Neil’s friends were trying to weave a coup out of a riot. He Pushed off of a metal chimney, setting his sights on the dark mass of Kredik Shaw. No ring of torches encroached on the palace. No one was so foolish.

Neil flew through the mists, the damp air whistling along his skin. His hair blew back from his face as he hurtled between metal chimneys, never touching down.

He landed on the mist-wet cobbles next to the gate. Four guards materialized from the darkness, shouting a challenge and lowering their spears.

Neil gave a light Pull on their spearheads. They stumbled forward, their weapons trying to escape their hands.

One of the men grasped his spear, eyes wide with fear. “Lord Ruler—"

“The skaa are in rebellion,” Neil said. “The fight for the city starts now. You’ve served the Lord Ruler, out of greed or desperation or fear. Tonight, you have a choice. I’m going into that palace, and you can’t stop me. The rebellion could use more soldiers.” He raised his hand, though it was unnecessary to his Allomancy. “Make your choice.”

For a suspended moment, Neil contemplated how exactly he was going to kill four men. They were armed and dressed in metal; it wouldn’t even be that hard. He could crush them with their own armour.

“The Survivor,” one man said, voice softened with awe.

“Not quite,” Neil said. “But you’ll find him in the square.”

The man nodded decisively, dropping his spear to his side. He reached to his shoulder and tore the insignia from his uniform, striding off into the mist with a determined set to his shoulders.

The other three looked to one another uncertainly. “Bloody hell,” one whispered, and then they all broke, falling out of stance and tearing the ranks from their coats. Neil burned steel, tracking the fading blue lines attached to their armour as they vanished behind him, leaving the gate undefended.

The doors burst open under his Push. There was no point in trying to be stealthy; the Inquisitors would feel his Allomancy regardless. He strode into the hall and burned iron, finding a candelabrum on the wall at the far end and Pulling against it. He lurched into the air, hurtling down the corridor like he was falling down a deep well. He released his Pull and skidded to a stop, breaking into a sprint as he turned down the next corridor.

A shout of alarm followed him down the hallway. He could hear the rattle of armour as soldiers left their guardrooms.

A cluster of guards formed ranks ahead of him. Neil didn’t slow. He reached inside and found his reserve of atium, drawing on its power.

For a moment the soldiers seemed to stretch, then shadows shot out in front of them, mist-like wraiths that looked identical to them. The shadows moved an instant before the soldiers themselves, revealing their intents.

Neil spun between them. The shadows should have made the scene more chaotic, but his mind felt stretched and limitless. A ghostly spear passed through his shoulder and he twisted without thinking, the real spear missing him by inches. He dodged between the guards, a thrill rising in his chest. He was untouchable.

He burst out of the group and slammed through the next door, emerging into the wide, domed chamber containing the wooden lodge. Two more guards stood post at its door, wielding only duelling canes: hazekillers. 

A shadow cut through his chest and Neil dodged instinctively. A wooden arrow shot through the space he’d previously occupied, clattering against the murals on the wall. He spun. Four guards ran down the hall in pursuit.

He Pulled against the swords of one of the running guards, ducking as it came hurtling straight towards his chest. It flew onwards, carried by its own momentum, slamming into the shield of one of the hazekillers and crushing him against the wooden wall of the lodge. Neil Pulled the sword back towards him and it cut a swathe through the regular guards.

The lone hazekiller shouted a command, and the armoured guards fell back warily. Neil kept mental hold of the steel-lines leading to their breastplates, ready to Push them against the walls and crush them if he had to.

The hazekiller would have already called for reinforcements. Neil Pulled the sword into his hand. It was bloodied and bent from its journey, but he didn’t mean to duel. The hazekiller eyed him warily. They were meant to fight in pairs, and preferably larger groups.

Neil charged, flinging the sword ahead of him. The hazekiller sidestepped neatly, bringing his cane up to slash at Neil’s chest. He blocked easily, pewter making his muscles strong enough to absorb the blow. He grabbed the man’s wooden breastplate and threw him aside.

He wrenched the door open, ignoring the injured hazekiller.

The room was warmer than he expected, and brighter. The walls were laden with furs, and a crackling fire blazed in the hearth. It felt almost welcoming, and perhaps that was why he didn’t immediately notice the elderly man sitting in a rocking chair.

“What is the meaning of this?” the man demanded. His hair was thin and grey, his eyes a malevolent black under his mottled brow. “Inquisitors!”

Neil looked around, frantic. There had to be a clue here; Kevin was certain it was important.

Something large crashed through the door. Neil leapt aside as an obsidian axe swung past his skull.

Two Inquisitors burst in, their grey robes a whirlwind of motion. They spotted him, moving in eerie tandem, their atium-shadows a step ahead.

One shade raised its axe, swinging down towards Neil.

Neil Pulled on a candlestick behind him, catching it in his palm and twisting. The shadow axe passed through him, the real one following a second behind. He blocked the swing with his candlestick, twisting it so that the axe wrenched out of the Inquisitors hand.

It snarled in fury, lunging towards him, but he could see where it would be before it moved. He danced backwards, effortlessly evading its attack.

It paused, regarding him, and then its atium-shadow burst apart, dozens of shadows leaping in every direction, fading as soon as they got a few inches from its body.

Neil’s blood went cold. Kevin had warned him of this. If you knew what your opponent would do, and they knew what you would do, then your reactions changed, and theirs did, multiplying and multiplying into infinite possibilities.

The Inquisitor had atium, too.

He was trapped—he was already trapped—

In desperation, he burned the Eleventh Metal.

Nothing happened.

He whirled, dodging another swing by the Inquisitor and Pulling against something across the room. It grated against the floor, but he lurched away towards it.

He didn’t have time to check what he’d Pulled against. He dodged a man in a soldier’s uniform, standing formally at attention, and skidded across a woven rug.

Why wasn’t it doing anything? He could feel the heat of it burning in his stomach alongside his other metals, but he couldn’t see—

He hesitated, blinking.

A man stood beside the elderly man in the chair. He wore long, V-patterned robes and a large array of bracelets and earrings, stretching his earlobes towards his shoulder. Neil could’ve sworn he wasn’t there before.

A hand closed on his shoulder. His distraction had cost him his lead on the Inquisitor. He twisted, trying to Pull free, but the creature caught his arm, yanking it up behind his back.

He fell to his knees, gasping in pain. The muscles in his shoulder strained, at the brink of tearing. He flared pewter, trying to focus all his strength into pulling free.

White pain lanced through his shoulder. A scream choked its way out of his throat, and he knew, distantly, that his shoulder had been dislocated.

An arm closed around his throat, restraining him, though he could barely muster the strength to resist. His arm was pinned, limp and folded wrong, against the Inquisitor’s chest. Hard lumps of metal pressed against Neil’s back, cold pieces of metal beneath the creatures robes digging into his spine.

Neil’s vision blurred with unshed tears. “Apologies, Lord Ruler,” the Inquisitor said, over Neil’s head.

The elderly man stood. “Kill him,” he ordered, voice icy.

Even through his agony, confusion sparked. The Lord Ruler? Neil had seen him before; he appeared as a young man, barely out of his twenties. This man looked closer to eighty.

“With respect, Lord Ruler,” the second Inquisitor said, crossing the room. A woman in a ballgown followed her, face callous and indifferent. “This one is of special interest to us. He’s the Butcher’s brat.”

“Is he?” the Lord Ruler eyed Neil with distaste. He sagged in the Inquisitors grasp, feeling the full weight of the Lord Ruler’s Soothing hit him. There was no fighting it. His copper couldn’t hold it at bay. He felt like he was suffocating, his emotions squished away to nothing but hopeless despair. The Lord Ruler waved a hand. “Get him out of my sight.”

The second Inquisitor smiled at him. The scar on her neck looked oddly familiar…

“Hello, Junior,” Lola said, grin wide and cruel.

He crumpled further. There was no fighting them. How could you fight a creature who healed from a mortal wound in hours?

“Drink this,” she commanded, holding a vial to his lips. He turned his head, a pathetic show of resistance, but she pinched his nose, forcing the vial into his mouth and pouring the contents down his throat. “Burn it.”

He stared at her, uncomprehending. Her atium shadow still preceded her actions, so he watched her ghostly hand sweep through his face before the real one struck his cheekbone. Stars burst in his vision at the blow.

“Burn it,” she snapped.

“No,” he said, and spat a fat, bloody gob straight onto her eye-spike.

The Inquisitor holding him tightened his grip and Neil couldn’t contain a cry of pain. “Now, Junior,” Lola snarled, wiping her eye-spike clean with one hand.

Neil heaved for air. Burning non-Allomantic metals could make you sick, or even kill you, but it was a convoluted way to kill someone when you already had them at your mercy.

He reached inside himself and found the small new reserve. A twelfth metal, impossibly. He burnt it.

Immediately, his metals went cold.

The woman in the ballgown vanished, as did the man standing behind the Lord Ruler.

 _What?_ He managed to think, frantically searching for his reserves. Everything was gone. Blackness encroached on his vision, the wounds pewter had been resisting overcoming him.

He slipped into unconsciousness.

\---

He woke in a cell.

He whimpered against the floor, shifting and crawling to his knees. His hand felt for his shoulder; it was back in place, but tender and bruised to the touch.

“Rise and shine, Nathaniel,” a mocking voice said.

Neil flinched, hitting the stone wall behind him. He reached inward for pewter instinctively, seeking strength, but there was nothing there.

Lola grinned at him through the iron bars. “Your father’s ever so excited to see you. He left a very important meeting just for you. Isn’t that flattering?”

Neil glared at her, not deigning to reply. His mistcloak was gone, as were his back-up vials. He wore only his undergarments, nothing he could use as a weapon. Even his earring had been taken.

He carefully maneuvered to his feet, pacing out the width of his cell. It was more of a cage than anything, bordered on three sides by iron bars. So much metal there, and no way for him to use any of it.

“I wouldn’t worry about your things, if I were you,” Lola said, still smiling.

“You’re not me,” Neil said, though it came out weaker than he’d meant it. His undershirt was bloodied; the wound from their fight in the square had opened again in the struggle. Without pewter, it pulsed with a dull ache.

Lola sat up, her bald head turning towards the door as if hearing something that Neil could not. Without his tin, it was entirely possible. “Such good timing, Junior!” she exclaimed. “That’s him now!”

Neil didn’t have time to panic before the door swung open and his father entered, blood-red robes billowing around him. Two Inquisitors flanked him, but Neil barely saw them.

“Nathaniel,” Nathan said, smiling widely. “My son, and my second greatest disappointment. How good of you to come here yourself and save us the trouble of having to find you.”

Neil said nothing. The room was cold, colder than he’d thought possible. He repressed a shiver, trying to stand firm. He could still feel the Lord Ruler’s Soothing on him, distantly Pushing down against his anger and defiance, making him feel weak and compliant.

“Nothing to say?” Nathan said. “Lola, unlock the cage.”

She grinned, rattling a ring of keys and opening the door ostentatiously. Nathan walked into the cage, no fear evident in his bearing. He wasn’t an Allomancer, but he’d never needed to be. He was ruthless enough to make up for it.

Neil’s eyes tracked the ring of keys as it disappeared into Lola’s robes. If he could get a hold of it and swallow one of the keys, he might be able to burn it. Nathan’s eyes followed his, a mocking grin on his face. “Silver, you foolish boy. I’m not so naïve as to bring Allomantic metals into a room with a Mistborn.”

Neil set his jaw, staring at the floor fixedly. He couldn’t fight, but he wouldn’t give them satisfaction either.

His father didn’t care. His fingers curled beneath Neil’s chin, forcing him to look into blue eyes, as bright and cold as his own. The tattoos on his head stretched all the way back, over the top of his skull, a mark of his prestige and rank. “A full Mistborn,” he said, shaking his head with a faint smile. “What a waste.

“Fuck you,” Neil ground out, yanking backwards out of his grip.

Nathan’s eyes narrowed in anger. “Insolent child,” he said, and backhanded Neil.

He wasn’t prepared. The blow knocked him against the bars and he collapsed, touching his hand to his face. His lip was bloodied, his head ringing.

Nathan grabbed the front of his shirt, hauling him to his feet. He hung there, half-supported by Nathan’s fist. “You’re going to pay for that,” Nathan hissed. “You’re going to beg for death when I’m through with you.”

He released Neil and he crumpled to the floor, boneless. Had he always been so weak, without pewter? He couldn’t remember. “That’s where we went wrong with your mother, you see,” Nathan said. “I am not so proud I can’t admit a mistake. She died too quickly. I will make you last for days.”

Neil raised his head, uncomprehending. “My mother?”

“She held out well, I’ll give her that much. She died swearing you’d starved to death years ago. If it weren’t for your stunt in the square, I would’ve given up the search entirely.”

Neil felt numb, his whole body cold. The air stabbed his lungs, clawing at his insides. His mother…

A distant shout echoed through the open door. Nathan jerked his head in irritation. “What is that?”

Lola tipped her head, clearly burning tin. “Fighting, lord prelan. Do you want me to go investigate?”

Nathan waved his hand in dismissal. “Go,” he ordered, turning back to Neil.

Lola waved to one of the other Inquisitors that Neil recognized as Jackson and the pair disappeared up the stairs. Neil was left with only his father and one other Inquisitor. It might as well have been an army, for all Neil could fight them.

“Where to start?” Nathan mused, regarding Neil as one might a cut of meat. “I’ve had so long to consider what to do with you, but now that you’re here I can’t decide.”

Neil opened his mouth to say something ill-advised, but the door slamming open interrupted him. Jackson crashed into the floor at the bottom of the stairs, an axe embedded in his chest.

“What in the Lord Ruler—” Nathan snarled, turning on his heels. Neil didn’t think, just lunged forward, tackling his father to the ground. The Inquisitor still with them grabbed Neil by the back of his neck, hauling him backwards like a man might carelessly fling a rat. Neil flailed, trying to kick him, but the Inquisitor dodged effortlessly.

Jackson tried to claw his way to his feet despite the blood soaking his chest. Neil kicked harder, desperation fizzing like pewter in his blood. Fury blazed in Nathan’s eyes as he scrambled upright. “Lock him in,” he ordered, striding out of the cell.

The Inquisitor tossed Neil aside. He tried to scramble to his feet and out the open door, but he was slow, too slow. The door clanged shut as the Inquisitor moved, inhumanly fast, and took up post next to the cage.

Neil stood in the centre of his cage, breathing heavily. A scream echoed down the stairs and cut off abruptly. Nathan cursed and retreated behind the Inquisitor, watching Jackson’s pathetic attempts to move.

A shadow passed the threshold and an obsidian dagger shot out, thrown by an unseen figure. The Inquisitor snatched it out of the air before it could strike Nathan, but it bought a precious second.

Andrew hit the ground running, grabbing the handle of the axe embedded in Jackson’s chest. He wrenched it free, blood sputtering from the gaping wound, and brought it down with a crash.

The severed head rolled several times over, the eye-spikes clanking against the floor.

Andrew raised his head, the bloody axe still held in one hand. His face was partially hidden behind a wooden helm, a leather jerkin laced tight over his shirt.

“Kill him,” Nathan ordered.

“No!” Neil shouted, throwing himself against the bars.

Andrew’s eyes flitted to him.

The Inquisitor seized on his distraction, lunging forward. Andrew dodged, raising the axe, but he was too slow, too slow by far to fight someone wielding pewter.

His axe went tumbling across the stone floor, skidding to a halt a few feet away from Neil’s cage. The Inquisitor lifted Andrew’s small frame into the air, grinning and gleeful. For the moment, Neil was forgotten.

And Lola had taken the key, leaving the cage unlocked.

Neil slammed his body against the door. It swung open, knocking Nathan aside. Neil stumbled but didn’t slow, sprinting towards the Inquisitor.

He heard Neil coming and turned, so Neil could see Andrew’s face going purple with asphyxiation. His other hand snapped out, catching Neil by the throat as well.

His fingers constricted, crushing Neil’s windpipe. Neil grabbed his robe, tugging feebly, trying to twist it and choke the Inquisitor, but he merely smiled at Neil’s weak attempt.

He tossed Neil away. He felt fabric tear under his fingers as he flew through the air, hitting the wall and sliding down it. He lay, broken and stunned, helpless to do anything but watch as the Inquisitor lifted Andrew higher, pinning him against the wall with one hand.

His robe hung open, revealing a body that was warped and melted, half a dozen spikes rammed through his chest. Something glinted within his robes and Neil forced himself to raise his head. A vial, poking out of its tight inner pocket.

Pain wracked his body but he pushed himself to his knees. He stumbled, nearly fell, and caught himself. The Inquisitor watched him coming and laughed. Neil staggered like a drunk, grit his teeth and seized onto the Inquisitor’s arm.

He couldn’t move it, not an inch. Andrew’s face was dangerously red, his lips foaming. The Inquisitor grabbed Neil with his free hand, shoving him aside.

The action made his robe flare open for an instant, and he didn’t notice Neil’s pickpocketing fingers until he danced backwards out of reach, popping the cork out of the vial with one hand.

“No!” the Inquisitor snarled, dropping Andrew and lunging towards Neil.

Neil dumped the contents of the vial down his throat and smiled.

Pewter burst to life in his stomach. His injuries retreated, the pain suddenly irrelevant. He ducked away, dodging the Inquisitor’s grab and swirling, catching his torn robe in one hand. It tangled around the creature for a moment before he ripped free, stumbling backwards bare-chested, wearing only a short pair of trousers.

His chest was huge and muscular, punctured by at least ten massive spikes that should have killed him. Neil darted aside as the Inquisitor attacked with his bare hands.

Horrible wheezing sounds tore from Andrew’s chest as he hauled himself to his feet. Neil burned iron, Pulling himself towards the cage, luring the Inquisitor away. His feet skidded, skipping like a stone on a lake across the stone floor.

“No, you fool!” Nathan bellowed. “Catch the other one!”

“No!” Neil screamed, Pushing back towards the Inquisitor, but he’d already turned back to Andrew. All he had to do was put a blade to Andrew’s throat, and Neil would surrender. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

The Inquisitor’s turned back revealed the pointed tips of all the spikes through his body. And one, straight through the centre of his spine, that had gone in the other way. Its flat head glinted in the torchlight, brighter than the tiny points of the ones through his chest.

The Inquisitor grabbed Andrew’s jerkin. Andrew snarled, an obsidian dagger flashing out of his sleeve, and Neil didn’t think.

He crashed into the two of them, his hand finding the solitary, backwards spike and _pulling_.

The three of them hit the ground in a pile. Neil rolled to his feet first, yanking Andrew out from under the Inquisitor.

The creature lay prone, slack as a corpse. Neil stared at him, waiting for him to claw at the ground like Jackson had, but he remained still.

His eyes slipped to the spike in his hand, its surface smeared and crusted with black and red. “He’s dead,” he whispered. “The spikes—”

Andrew lunged, knocking Neil aside. An axe swung through the air beside him, missing him by a hair's breadth and sending sparks off the wall behind him. “You filthy little—” Nathan snarled, and cut off with a wet gurgle.

Neil watched in horrified fascination as his father teetered, eyes wide with rage. Andrew’s dagger stuck out of his throat, blood slipping down to his collarbone and soaking his robe, spreading in a wide, dark circle.

His father’s body hit the floor with a dull smack. Neil lurched, his mouth open in shock. His father lay beside the Inquisitor, and he did not rise.

A wounded noise ripped from Neil’s throat. A hand on his arm tugged at his awareness and he ripped his eyes away. Andrew grabbed his chin in one hand, tipping him side to side to check for new injuries.

“You came for me,” Neil whispered, staring at his sweaty, reddened face. His throat was already blackening with bruises.

“Yes.”

Neil shook his head, a giddy feeling rising in his chest, almost hysterical. “We didn’t tell anyone I was coming here.”

“I choked the truth out of Kevin,” Andrew said, a fire lighting behind his eyes. Neil watched, hypnotized. Andrew dropped his chin, gripping his forearms too tightly. His chest still heaved from his near choking, but his eyes held Neil and didn’t let go.

His gaze slipped to Andrew’s lips and suddenly he understood, knew what the strange magnetism between them meant. His heart, already racing from the fight, rose in his chest, hot and hungry and full of light.

_Anyone will betray you, Neil. Even me._

_She died swearing you starved to death years ago…_

 “Yes or no?” Andrew asked.

“Yes,” Neil said, and kissed him.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mooooore fight scenes :D

Nicky ran, a crowd of skaa workers following him. Aaron ran alongside him, for once completely aligned with one another. Screams echoed through the streets as a group of soldiers gave chase, the clank of chain mail pushing the skaa to ever greater speeds.

Air knifed into his lungs and he knew, he _knew_ they weren’t going to make it. The square was only a few blocks away, where their allies gathered, but he was no pewterarm. He was an informant, a party-going spy.

“Keep running!” Aaron bellowed, screeching to a halt. Nicky nearly fell in his haste to stop with him. Aaron shot him a glance, deathly serious. They set their feet in trained fighting posture, but there was no hope to it. The skaa flowed around them, rabbit quick in their terror.

“Aaron—”

Aaron’s hand shot out, gripping Nicky’s arm fiercely. He felt tears well up, but swallowed them, grasping his staff in both hands and facing down the squad of soldiers. They weren’t heroes, but they would die trying.

The soldiers closed the gap quickly. “Lord Ruler,” Nicky whispered, his hands shaking. Fifty paces out, the soldiers lowered their spears, charging straight towards them.

Thirty paces.

Twenty.

The soldiers bellowed war cries, closing in on them like dogs who had scented blood. Ten paces.

A squad of soldiers in blue regalia crashed into the side of the pursuing men. So fixated on Aaron and Nicky, the soldiers were slow to react. They stumbled forward, blades cutting through bodies, and Nicky brought his staff up in a wild swing, knocking the nearest soldier aside. Aaron shifted instinctively, putting his back to Nicky, but they’d been forgotten. The blue-clad soldiers ripped through the other squad like tissue, until the last few broke and ran.

Nicky trembled, his grasp on the staff slipping. “Nicky!” a voice cried, and a figure rushed towards him, but he couldn’t focus his eyes. “Nicky, are you okay?”

His staff fell from nerveless fingers. He’d been so sure he was dead this time. Hands clasped his cheeks, gentle and warm. “Nicky, I’m so sorry. Please look at me.”

“Erik?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Erik said, half smiling in relief. “Oh Nicky, I’m so sorry.”

“You came back.”

“I never should have left you.”

Nicky shook, glancing around them at the carnage. Erik’s soldiers picked through the dead, pulling weapons and armour from the dead and binding the living in ropes. Aaron stood a few feet away, tense but unharmed, his staff still gripped tightly in one hand.

He gave Nicky a short nod and turned away. Nicky let Erik pull his attention back to him. “Nicky, I’m sorry—”

Nicky didn’t give him time to finish. He threw his arms around Erik’s neck and pulled him in for a fierce kiss.

\---

“Lay down your weapons and remain in your Keep,” Dan shouted. “We want no bloodshed, but we will not hold back if you attack.”

The assembled soldiers of Keep Hasting shifted, but no one retreated. “We don’t make deals with slaves,” a voice cried, haughty. “Charge!”

The soldiers broke into a run. Dan glanced beside her, where Matt stood, proud and strong in his armour, a massive hammer propped on his shoulder.

“So this is how it begins,” he said, grinning at her.

“So it is,” she agreed, hefting her broadsword. It was nearly as tall as her, but with pewter burning in her stomach and a hundred armed skaa behind her, it felt like straw.

The charging soldiers bellowed, a mass of well honed destructive power. Dan thrust her sword in the air. “For freedom!” she screamed, and the skaa answered.

She took off at a sprint towards the soldiers, Matt matching every step, and flared pewter, sword raised and heart pounding like drum.

\---

Allison hung back, watching Seth argue with the crew leader. Fear, that was no good, she could Soothe that away. Seth’s back straightened, confidence radiating from his vicious speech. That was what the rest of the crew couldn’t grasp—sometimes you had to lower your demeanour to reach people like this. It was what made Seth such an effective twixt. Even she had deigned to put on rough skaa clothes to accompany him.

“You’re nothing but scavengers,” Seth spat. “Take back control. _Strike._ The old era dies tonight. Stand with us, and you will get your reward.”

“A hook through the throat, more like,” a grubby man called from the back of the room.

Allison rolled her eyes impatiently and flared brass, slamming her Soothing into the whole room. Several men staggered as she stood, approaching Seth and touching his shoulder. “Really, dear, we don’t need such pathetic excuses for thieves.”

He took it in stride. “No. I suppose there are others who will want our money more.”

Allison smiled and took his arm, loosening her Soothing just enough to allow greed and outrage to slip through. “What—” the crew leader gasped, still weak from the force of her Push on his emotions.

“You don’t think we’re common rebels, do you?” she said, disdainfully.

“Mistborn,” one of the men whispered, reverent and afraid. She didn’t bother to correct him. She and Seth strode towards the door, arm in arm. They’d just made it out into the mists when a man shouted after them.

“Wait!”

They paused, looking back with absolute indifference.

“We’ll do it,” the man said. “We’ll take the job.”

Allison smiled.

\---

“Natalie Shields.”

Renee stood ahead of her squad of skaa soldiers, waving a hand to keep them back. A half-dozen obligators stood at the doors of the Canton of Inquisition. At their head stood a woman with elaborate tattoos stretching all the way up over her shaved head.

“Lady Elariel,” Renee said calmly. “I see you’ve been promoted.”

“And you are still just a scrawny mongrel. Tell me, do your new friends know you used to be one of us?”

Several of her soldiers muttered at that. “That’s right,” Lady Elariel said, smiling viciously. “You used to hunt skaa half-breeds. What does that make you, hm?”

“A hypocrite,” a junior obligator said, grinning gleefully at Renee.

Renee levelled her gaze, not letting anything but calm confidence into her expression. “Sometimes,” she said, loud enough to carry, “A hypocrite is merely a person in the process of changing.”

A low rumble from her soldiers. Many of them had fought in the Lord Ruler’s campaigns, mercenaries just trying to feed their families. They had done reprehensible things in the name of survival, but today they balanced the scales.

Lady Elariel scoffed. “You are what you always were, Natalie. A killer.”

“Yes,” Renee said, drawing two long knives from her belt. “Perhaps I am still that.”

 Lady Elariel stepped forward, drawing two identical knives. By unspoken agreement neither the obligators nor the skaa interfered as the two women began to circle, eyes intent on one another.

\---

Kevin stood in the square on an elevated platform. Wymack stood to the side, directing skaa recruits to various leaders who could take them to weapon stashes. After the crew had led the first few groups here it had taken on a momentum of its own. Dozens of runners led clumps of skaa to the square to join the resistance, where they were delegated to various tasks. He could see light in the mist, fires burning in the city, but they’d already dispatched groups to fight them.

Ash fell from the sky, dusting his shoulders. His forearms were bare, the scars from Hathsin stark in the torchlight. “The Survivor!” someone shouted, and he raised his fist, prompting a roar of support.

He nodded and turned to join Wymack. On the other side of the platform, Abby directed a group of healers as wounded skaa were carried in from the many remaining noble holdouts. About half of the Great Houses had taken their direction to remain cloistered in their Keeps, but there were still many active pockets of fighting across the city.

“Coach,” he said, and Wymack stepped away, letting one of the remaining army lieutenants take over.

“Hastings has fallen,” Wymack reported. “The others sound close to capitulating.”

“House Moriyama?”

Wymack looked at him with serious eyes. “They’re still resisting.”

Kevin nodded. “The skaa need to see me fighting. I should go.”

“No,” Wymack said. “Your arm is barely healed enough to hold a spoon, let alone a sword.”

“I won’t stand idle while men fight in my name.”

“We can’t lose you.”

“Sir!” the lieutenant interrupted, and both swung around, following his pointing finger.

Wymack cursed softly. Kevin merely felt resigned.

“We can—” Wymack began.

“No,” Kevin said. “I will face him.” He raised his voice and waved to the crowd of skaa. “Stand aside!”

The skaa parted, skittering like startled cockroaches. Riko Moriyama strode into the gap like it was his birthright, too confident or too stupid to be afraid of being surrounded. Ten hazekillers followed him in a V formation. Their wooden armour and duelling canes gave Kevin no anchors to Pull or Push against.

He let his mistcloak stream out behind him as he stepped into the gap, facing Riko, a single man against a squad of trained killers.

“Kevin,” Riko said, throwing his arms wide open and smiling like a viper. “My brother!”

“We haven’t been brothers in a long time,” Kevin replied, his voice hoarse, but not with fear. His throat still bore red marks that promised to bruise in an ugly and obvious fashion.

Riko came to a halt a few paces away, his hazekillers falling into stance behind him. “Oh Kevin,” he said. “You wound me.”

“Are you here to surrender?” Kevin asked. “It’s not too late to pick the right side.”

“Don’t be foolish. I am here to clean up a mess that should have been dealt with years ago. Kneel, and make this easier on everyone.”

“The skaa have knelt long enough. We will bend to no man.” A few scattered shouts of support, quickly stifled by malicious looks from the hazekillers. Kevin felt like he was suffocating, but he bulled forward. “The Lord Ruler falls tonight. Will you fall with him?”

Riko laughed. “He will crush you like an ant.”

“Look around you,” Kevin said, voice growing in strength. “Look at them. They will not stand and watch their children be enslaved a day more. There are only two ways out of this square, _brother._ With us, or in pieces.”

The skaa shouted again, clustering a little closer, closing the retreat. Kevin’s chest threatened to collapse. Riko’s expression changed from mocking to furious.

But Kevin was not a helpless lordling any more, quivering under Riko’s thumb. He slammed the full weight of his Soothing onto Riko, crushing everything in him but fear. Riko staggered. “You insolent—”

Kevin tore his eyes away from Riko, seeking Thea. Her eyes met his, glinting behind her wooden helm. For a crystalline moment he couldn’t hear the skaa spitting vitriol at the cluster of nobles. She lifted her chin, her face proud and shining in the firelight.

She strode out of formation, arrogance oozing from every pore. “Kevin,” she said with a curt nod, and whirled, falling in beside him.

“Thea,” he said by way of greeting, and ran his eyes over each of the hazekillers in turn. Several he didn’t know, but Jean cowered when Kevin met his gaze.

“Traitor!” Riko snarled, lunging towards them. Kevin held out his hand, a coin held in his palm, and Riko froze, their dire situation only just hitting him.

Thea tossed her head, directing her haughty stare at the hazekillers. “Will you really stand beside the monster?” she demanded. “I am done bowing to puny men and their delusions of power. I stand with the Survivor.”

“The Survivor!” The skaa took up the cry, fists thrust in the air, fear forgotten.

Jean broke with a cry, dodging Riko’s furious swipe and nearly falling as he ran for Kevin. “Anyone else?” Kevin asked, a thread of elation running through him, Thea beside him and Jean at his back.

The hazekillers shifted uneasily but didn’t move. Riko recovered his arrogant posture, pointing a furious finger at Kevin. “You will pay for your disobedience.”

“No,” Kevin said. “I don’t think I will.”

\---

Neil’s muscles fizzed with power as he took the stairs out of the dungeon two at a time. Andrew’s footsteps echoed in his ears, amplified by his Allomancy. “What happened to Lola?” he asked over his shoulder.

Andrew gave him a flat look.

“The other Inquisitor?”

“Killed half my squad then headed for the throne room.”

Neil nodded, cresting the stairs and finding himself in a rectangular chamber, facing a group of skaa soldiers. Their weapons rattled as they fell into a desperate formation, wooden staffs clutched in frightened hands. Corpses littered the ground around them, outnumbering the living.

Neil gave them a quick nod, scouring the room for any other threats. The skaa relaxed a little when Andrew appeared, bruised but alive.

“Sir,” one of them said, saluting.

Neil paced a quick lap of the room, pulling open the large cabinet there and shuddering. He closed the door on the racks of torture tools, flipping open the wooden chest beside it.

A faint smile tugged at his lips and he dug down into the box, pulling out his mistcloak. It was a little rumpled, and a couple of the tassels clung together from what must have been blood, but as he rummaged through the chest he found his trousers, shirt and sash. His earring had been carelessly thrown into the bottom of the chest and of his vials had smashed when it was tossed in, but the rest were full.

He dressed and downed two of his vials then hesitated, the last of the Eleventh Metal held in one hand. His atium was gone, burnt up or stolen for the Inquisitors own use, but they either hadn’t recognized the Eleventh Metal, or they hadn’t cared enough to take it.

He hoped it was the former. He tossed the pale metal dust into his mouth and washed it down with the last of his metal vials. His reserves sprang to life within, massive wells of power alight with heat. The world brightened around him, his body strong and somehow more solid, more real.

His cloak flared out around him as he turned back to the group. The skaa stared at him with something akin to awe.

“Survivor…” one whispered.

“No,” Neil said, his shoulders tightening in discomfort. “I’m just Neil.”

The skaa looked skeptical, but they didn’t contradict him. “What is your plan, my lord?”

“I’m not your lord either,” Neil said, looking to Andrew. His blank expression was marred with bruises, but he only tipped his head, waiting for Neil’s word.

He sucked in a deep breath. “Andrew, you remember where the Inquisitor’s chambers are?” He did—Andrew knew the palace maps like a rat knows the sewers. “Take whoever is still willing and go there. The Inquisitors should be tired from the day of action, they’ll be resting. The spike in their back seems to be the key—remove it, and they die instantly.”

“What about you, my l—” the skaa cut himself off, cringing back a little. Lord Ruler, and these were considered bold, for skaa.

He reached out, burning zinc and Rioting their emotions. It felt like trying to Pull against a massive weight. The Lord Ruler’s Soothing was here too, flattening out their courage. Neil flared zinc, Rioting them just enough to hold the Lord Ruler off. Just here, just these few soldiers.

His hands broke out in sweat from the effort, but the soldiers straightened, the light in their eyes sharpening to a cold resolve. “I’ll deal with the Lord Ruler,” Neil said, turning to the small window. Faint wisps of mist floated in, curling around the frame.

The skaa nodded as if that was perfectly rational. Where did they get this blind faith in him? He’d killed one Inquisitor, and that with Andrew’s help.

The skaa began talking quietly among themselves and Andrew cut Neil off, stepping into his space and staring into his eyes. Neil swallowed, the sound too loud and harsh in his tin-enhanced ears.

“I have to do it,” Neil said softly. “So long as he lives, the rebellion doesn’t stand a chance.”

“You can’t kill him.”

“Then I’ll tie him up and throw him in the cage,” Neil said. “No one else can do it. Besides, I have an idea.”

“Your last brilliant idea was to attack three Inquisitors in broad daylight.”

A wry smile tugged on Neil’s lips. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Dumb luck will only get you so far.”

“I’m not relying on luck,” Neil said. “The Eleventh Metal did something, Andrew. I’m not sure what but it felt…familiar. Like…”

He paused, staring out into the formless mists. Slowly, he continued. “It felt like burning gold, except I could see other peoples’ gold shadows. It’s the secret. It has to be.”

“It doesn’t have to be anything,” Andrew said.

“I have to go anyway,” Neil said, fixing his eyes back on Andrew’s face. “Kill the Inquisitors for me?”

Andrew’s jaw worked, muscles jumping in his cheek. He balled his fist in Neil’s mistcloak, tugging sharply. His other hand curled around the back of Neil’s neck, a strong, comforting weight.

Neil closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to Andrew’s, feeling his breath wafting over Neil’s lips. “Thank you,” Neil murmured, brushing their noses together.

The skaa were looking politely away when Neil and Andrew broke apart. Andrew stepped back, giving Neil a long stare that said a thousand things all at once. Neil hoped he’d live long enough to understand a few of them.

“Don’t be a martyr,” he said aloud.

Neil smiled and climbed onto the window ledge, into the mists.

\---

The night enveloped him, cool air soothing the burning heat of his wounds. He Pushed himself between the spires of the palace, climbing ever higher. The Lord Ruler’s Soothing weighed him down, seeping through his coppercloud like an insidious poison.

He didn’t know exactly where the throne room was, but he didn’t need to. He chased the Soothing, the sense of doom thickening with every jump. He caught a spire with one hand, staring out into the sea of mists.

A brilliant glow lit up the night, the mists reflecting in blues and reds and oranges. He recognized the swirling pattern of stained glass from childhood visits to the palace. They encircled the entire throne room, a massive circular chamber near the peak of the palace.

Neil reached into his coin pouch and tossed a few pennies into the air. They glimmered in the multi-coloured light and he Pushed them away from him, shooting the tiny missiles into the beautiful glass.

The coins hurtled through the air, splintering the glass in a spray of metal and colour. Neil flew through the mists behind them and hit the weakened glass with his shoulder.

It shattered, bursting into the bright lit chamber. Neil skidded on the glass strewn floor, his metals burning hot within him. The mists followed him, curling around his body.

The Lord Ruler sat on his raised throne in the centre of the room, but he looked much different to the Lord Ruler Neil had seen a few hours previous. His face was smooth and youthful, his hair free of grey. Only his eyes betrayed his vast age; they stared at him with bottomless disdain, as if he was nothing but a nuisance, an insect to be squashed.

“Kill him,” he said, waving a hand. A figure in a grey robe stepped up, axe in hand.

“Junior—” she said with a loathing smile.

Neil ignored her, sprinting towards the throne. The Lord Ruler didn’t move. No mortal weapon could kill him; he need not fear any attack.

Neil reached inside, finding the Eleventh Metal. It lit up in his stomach, a faint heat, and two new figures appeared in the chamber. A woman in a ballgown hovered behind Lola, sharing her hideous grin, and the man in the robes materialized behind the Lord Ruler.

Neil raced up the steps, an obsidian dagger in one hand. The Lord Ruler made a sound of disgust, reaching out to stop him, but Neil flew right past his grasping hand, plunging his dagger through the Lord Ruler’s past-self.

He passed right through, his momentum carrying him past the throne and stumbling down the steps. He whirled. The man in the robes stood exactly as he had.

 _No!_ Neil swiped his dagger through the man again, but he was as immaterial as the mists. He’d thought maybe if he killed the Lord Ruler’s past self—his alternate self?—it would kill the present one too.

Clearly, it didn’t work like that. Neil threw himself down the dais, dodging Lola’s wild attack. “Inquisitors!” the Lord Ruler cried. “To me!”

Neil scrambled, ducking Lola’s axe and striking out with his dagger. He caught her across the thigh, slicing her muscle open. It only served to enrage her further.

 _There has to be a secret,_ he thought in desperation. _It can’t have all been meaningless._

“INQUISITORS!” the Lord Ruler bellowed. Neil flinched, the sound like a thunderclap in his sensitive ears. Lola got an arm hooked through his mistcloak and ripped it from his shoulders, spinning him on his feet.

She wrapped an arm around his neck, her powerful forearm crushing his windpipe. But he wasn’t the same helpless boy they’d locked in the dungeons, bereft of his metals. He plunged the knife backwards, into her gut. It bounced off one of the chest spikes under her robe and sank in, a hand’s breadth deep.

A snarl ripped from her lips and her grip slackened. Neil dropped to his knee, throwing her over his shoulder. She tumbled to the ground, robes tangling around her legs.

Neil didn’t give her a chance to rise. Flared pewter made tearing her robe easy, like ripping tissue. Her spike came out clean in his hand.

He looked up, breathing hard. Lola’s body lay at his feet, a grotesque mockery of what a human corpse should look like. The Lord Ruler stood, irritation curling his lip.

“Inquisi—”

A soft clink stopped him dead.

Andrew strode slowly out into the open chamber. He dropped something glittering and sharp on the floor, then another, and another. A dozen spikes rattled to the ground, left strewn behind him like so much refuse.

“You—” the Lord Ruler growled, and the spikes started to shiver on the floor. Neil moved by instinct, Pushing against them away from Andrew with all his might. The Lord Ruler’s counter-acting Pull made his feet slide against the ground, the spikes shuddering in place on the floor, pinned between their Allomancy.

“Enough,” the Lord Ruler said making a cutting gesture. Neil cried out as the Lord Ruler Pulled on the spikes, so powerful they ripped free of Neil’s Push like he wasn’t even there. One struck Andrew in the shoulder, knocking him off balance.

“Get away from him!” Neil shouted, Pulling the spikes towards himself. They hurtled through the air and he released the Pull, dodging aside and sprinting towards the Lord Ruler.

Blue steel lines linked him to metal bracelets on the Lord Ruler’s wrists. Neil dropped a coin and jumped, Pulling against one of the bracelets to try and knock the Lord Ruler off balance.

His arm jerked for a moment, but then he swiped it through the air, a vicious cutting gesture. With his anchor suddenly shifted, Neil’s Pull went askew, sending him tumbling onto the stone floor.

He rolled to his feet, pewter finding his balance quickly. Where did Andrew—

He burst from behind the throne, his wooden helm hiding his expression. The Lord Ruler turned from Neil, a hand raised to backhand Andrew across the face.

Neil Pulled on his wrist bracer with all he was worth. A pewter enhanced blow could kill, easily. The Lord Ruler’s hand slowed in the air, like he was dragging a heavy chain, and Andrew slashed his blade down the Lord Ruler’s suit jacket.

Neil’s Pull slowed the Lord Ruler’s hand but couldn’t stop it. Andrew tried to dodge backwards, but compared to an Allomancer he moved laughably slow. The blow struck him across the face, throwing him backwards to the ground. He hit with a sickening crunch.

“Andrew!” Neil cried out.

Andrew shifted, crumpled on the floor. Neil ran towards him blindly.

The Lord Ruler stood, blocking his path. Neil skidded to a halt, reaching for his steel-lines, trying to find a weapon as the Lord Ruler’s full attention bore down on him. His Soothing deepened, crushing his desperation, his anger, everything but despair.

“Andrew,” Neil hissed.

“Enough,” the Lord Ruler said, and something struck him.

He jerked backwards, hurtling through the air like shrapnel. He hit a stone pillar and hung there like a coin caught in a Steelpush. But no one was supposed to be able to Push on metals within a person’s body.

No one was supposed to be able to pierce copperclouds either.

His reserves tugged at his gut, trying to rip free of his stomach. He cried out in agony, feeling a horrible tearing sensation within him. He flared pewter, clinging desperately to consciousness.

The Push relented for a second and he crashed to the ground, only to for it to redouble, slamming him into the wall. His leg twisted beneath him, burning, and snapped.

He dug his fingernails into the ground, pain searing its way up his thigh. His breath tore out of him, his lungs collapsing under the weight of the Lord Ruler’s Push. The large door to the chamber ripped free of its hinges, dropped coins shooting away into the night. Neil even thought he saw fragments of broken glass shuddering and sliding away from the throne.

He managed to raise his head a fraction, seeking Andrew. He crouched a little way beyond the Lord Ruler, his arm clutched against his chest, clearly as caught as Neil by the invisible force of the Lord Ruler’s Push.

The Lord Ruler pulled the shredded suit jacket from his shoulders. Andrew’s gaze lifted for a moment and Neil followed it, but the Lord Ruler merely tossed the jacket aside, revealing a normal, unmarred chest.

 _Spikes_ , Neil realized, Andrew had been looking for spikes. A much better plan than his foolish gambit with the Eleventh Metal, but they had still failed.

He was just too strong.

“You think I rely on tricks to maintain my power?” the Lord Ruler said, as though annoyed at the mere idea. “You think I am some Inquisitor, my powers endowed upon me by others? I. Am. God. You will always fail.”

Neil flared pewter, trying to stay conscious. The Lord Ruler shook his head, regarding the scattered spikes on the floor. His expression was heavy and ancient, though his body was hale as a soldier’s. More bracers twined their way up his arms, strands weaving together and piercing his skin so they couldn’t be Pushed away.

Hopelessness crushed Neil to the ground. He was right. There was no fighting. He looked at the Lord Ruler’s expression and knew that it didn’t matter how many skaa fought back tonight. The Lord Ruler would go out there and kill, and kill, and he would never tire, never slow. He would kill them all.

The mists crept in through the shattered glass. _Help me,_ Neil begged, reaching for the safety of the concealing mists.

They pulled away. It felt like failure, like even the mists had betrayed him. He collapsed, the last of his energy drained. Faint shouts echoed through the mists, fires blazing through the city.

“They will die because of what you’ve done,” the Lord Ruler said, sounding weary as he surveyed the burning city, like killing was a boring chore. “Why do your kind insist on fighting? God cannot be killed. _God_ cannot be overthrown. How many people must I kill before you idiot skaa accept the truth? I am eternal!”

A voice cut through the Lord Ruler’s, hoarse, like boulders in a landslide. “I would rather die,” Andrew rasped. “Than worship a God like you.”

“Then die,” the Lord Ruler said, waving his hand. Andrew went flying backwards, hitting a wall.

“No!” Neil snarled, coming to his knee, his broken leg twisted beneath him. His metals were almost spent, the fires guttering and burning out.

The Lord Ruler strode towards Andrew, hefting a wooden staff in one hand. The bracers on his upper arm glistened in the firelight, the piercings that went through his skin preventing Neil from Pulling against his.

_Bracers…_

Neil raised his head, reaching inside and burning the Eleventh Metal. The man in the robes appeared behind the Lord Ruler again. His expression was calm, content. Nothing like the cold cruelty of the man himself.

His robes hung in dark, layered V-patterns. Oddly, they reminded him of something. Abby’s robes, muted where hers were bright. A Terrisman?

He was mere strides away from Andrew now. Neil could feel the answer scraping at the back of his mind. What did it matter, if the Lord Ruler might have been a Terrisman, in a different life? He wasn’t now, he was—

_A Feruchemist._

The Lord Ruler’s bracers shone as he raised his arm to strike Andrew down. Pierced, so that they couldn’t be Pushed or Pulled, but he hadn’t cared about Neil Pushing on his other bracers.

“You’re no God,” Neil growled, pushing himself upright against the pillar. The Lord Ruler turned, his expression disgusted. “You’re not anything.”

“You are nothing but an insect,” the Lord Ruler said. “You know nothing of Godhood.”

“Neither do you,” Neil said, and burnt steel. Blue lines erupted from every source of metal in the room, but not to the bracers piercing the Lord Ruler’s arms. He Pulled a couple coins towards himself and shot them towards the Lord Ruler. They peppered his back, digging in.

The Lord Ruler snarled, turning towards him. His Push struck Neil like a wall, throwing him backwards.

Neil screamed, flaring his steel higher. He could pierce copperclouds; he could Push against metal that pierced the body. It must be possible. The Lord Ruler had proved it was possible.

Still, no blue lines touched the Lord Ruler’s bracers. His _metalminds_.

The Lord Ruler’s Push slammed him against the glass window. It cracked under his weight, the mist seeping through the fractures.

_Please…_

His earring ripped out of his ear, Pushed away by the immense force of the Lord Ruler’s Push. The mists twisted, wrapping around him, attracted to his failing Allomancy. The corners of his vision were blurring and going white, and he knew he was dying, crushed against the stained glass.

“Neil!” Andrew shouted.

_Andrew!_

Neil tasted blood on his tongue and heaved in a deep breath despite the immense pressure holding him down, the mist-damp air rushing into his lungs.

_I will not fail!_

The mists burst alight inside him, burning like metals in his stomach. Two brilliant blue steel-lines appeared, each leading to one of the Lord Ruler’s bracers.

Neil _Pushed._

The bracers ripped free, tearing bloody chunks from the Lord Ruler’s arms. He cried out, turning, but Neil used one last Push to send the bracers skidding out of the broken glass on the opposite side of the room. The blue lines faded as the bracers dropped away into the night.

“ _No,”_ the Lord Ruler screamed, staggering in that direction. 

He shrank with every step, his muscles deflating and sagging on his body. His hair greyed, thinned and fell away from a head that was suddenly spotted with age. Without the stores of youth in his metalminds, his body stretched, trying to catch up to his true age.

He stumbled another step, his back curved over. His whole body shook, trembling and he collapsed to the ground, clawing at the stones with frail fingers.

Neil slumped against the stones. The mists flowed across his skin, cool and friendly, as they should be. He was nearly out of metals, but he didn’t know how to ask the mists to help him again. He didn’t have the energy.

A hand landed on his shoulder, but he didn’t react. If it was an Inquisitor, let him die.

“Neil,” Andrew said, pulling at his shoulder. “Drink.”

The cool feeling of glass under his lips made him squint his eyes, but he couldn’t make out anything. Andrew tipped the vial down his throat and Neil reached inside himself like a ghost, barely able to reach his reserves.

Pewter sparked and fizzled in his stomach and finally burned. The throbbing in his skull retreated, and he heaved a few painful breaths as it steadied his muscles, strengthening his bones.

He rested his head against Andrew’s knee and blinked blearily up at him. His left arm was wrapped in a shirt and bound against his chest, his face bloody and bruised.

“Is he dead?” Neil whispered.

“He’s dead,” Andrew said.

Neil closed his eyes and leaned against Andrew’s leg, and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> theres a quote in here stolen from Sanderson's other series the stormlight archive, i take no credit


	10. Epilogue

 “—by combining his goldmind and his Allomancy, he was able to find a shortcut,” Kevin said, pushing a pair of spectacles up from where they slid down his nose. He had an array of books across the table in front of him, stolen from the Lord Ruler’s palace. Though the skaa rebellion technically held Kredik Shaw, the crew had unanimously decided not to base their new government there. 

Erik Klose had come through with the solution, allowing access to his family’s Keep. It was large and well-known, so the skaa could easily find their new leaders. “He took the Investiture from his Allomantic metals and used it to feed his Feruchemy. He could then burn his metalminds, releasing the Investiture and in essence creating a new Allomantic metal.”

He looked up expectantly. The crew blinked at him, a few eyebrows raised.

“Well,” Matt said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think I knew a couple of those words.”

Laughter filled the room. Kevin scowled. “How are most of you Allomancers but you haven’t even studied basic Allomantic theory—”

“I know how Allomancy works,” Matt protested. “You eat the metal to get the funky magic power.”

Kevin’s eyes looked like they’d bulge out of his head. Neil smiled, sitting in the back of the room on a sofa with Andrew at his side. The rest of the crew filled up the study with noise, sitting in pilfered furniture from the Klose household.

“The Lord Ruler was no God,” Abby said softly. “He was merely a man who got lucky. He could use both Allomancy and Feruchemy and it made him immortal.”

The laughter died off at her serious tone. She stared at her hands, clenched into fists in her robe. “He was one of us,” she said, enunciating each word with brutal exactness. “He made eunuchs of our men and forced our women into breeding programs, all to prevent the chance of another child being born who shared both powers. And he was _one of us._ ”

Wymack’s hand rested on her shoulder, squeezing in support. She lifted her hand and touched her fingertips to his in gratitude. “He’s dead now,” Wymack said. “That’s what counts.”

“And we have his reference books on Hemalurgy,” Kevin said, tapping a couple of the books. “The making of Inquisitors. I haven’t had a chance to read them yet, but hopefully they’ll explain how the spikes grant abilities. After all, Neil’s allowed him to pierce copperclouds and Push against metal piercing the body, which means—”

“No, it didn’t,” Neil said. “I’d already lost my earring by the time I Pushed on the Lord Ruler’s metalminds.”

“What?”

“I told you. I drew on the mists. I…burned them somehow.”

“No one’s ever recorded that being possible before,” Kevin said, skepticism in his voice.

Neil barked a short laugh. “After everything that’s happened, doesn’t it strike you that maybe we don’t know as much about Allomancy as we thought we did?”

“I have access to five centuries worth of scholarly records—”

“Alright kids, settle down,” Wymack interrupted. “You can bicker about magical theory later. We’ve got a city full of skaa and nobles and a hostile Garrison that just found out it’s been locked out of its own home. We’ve got more immediate problems.”

“As I recall,” Allison said lazily, carding her fingers through Seth’s hair. “We only hired on to overthrow the Lord Ruler, not replace him.”

“Who’re you going to give the job to? Yeden?”

A couple dark chuckles answered that.

“It’s not like we can mess it up any worse than before,” Nicky said with a grin. “A pile of soot would look like a good leader after the Lord Ruler.”

“You think you’re funny, do you?” Wymack asked, folding his arms and glaring down at them. “You thought overthrowing the Lord Ruler was hard? That was the easy part.”

He flipped a piece of chalk out of his pocket, dragging the chalkboard a little closer. “Now, let’s begin.”

\---

Wymack kicked them out of the study past midnight. They shuffled into the hallway muffling yawns, dispersing to the rooms Erik had offered.

A faint tug on Neil’s sleeve drew his attention. Andrew tipped his head in the direction of the stairwell and Neil nodded, following him down the hall.

They climbed the stairs in silence. Neil leaned on the banister to keep weight off his leg, but it was mostly healed already from keeping pewter on a steady burn. Andrew’s broken arm would take much longer to recover. The bruises on his neck had mottled into a dark purple that stretched up his cheek and over his left eye.

Andrew shoved the door open, letting them out into the mists. They swirled around Neil in greeting, friendly, and he settled down beside Andrew on the edge of the rooftop.

A slow, steady fall of ash dusted their shoulders. Killing the Lord Ruler hadn't stopped the ash from falling, or made flowers bloom in the brown fields. For most of the skaa life continued as normal. They had returned to their fields and factories a few days after the victory, though at least now they weren't followed by the taskmasters’ lash.

Andrew’s eyes followed the tendrils of mist as they danced around him. “How did you do it?”

Neil raised his hand and watched the mist play between his fingers, looking almost alive. “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been able to do it again.” He touched his ear, which was pink and tender where his earring had torn out. He hadn’t gone to look for it.

“You don’t make sense,” Andrew said, sounding frustrated.

Neil smiled. “At least it’ll never be boring.”

Andrew’s lips pinched in a scowl. Neil’s eyes traced Andrew’s profile, the clean lines of his unbruised cheek. His skin felt warm, energized despite the late hour.

“So,” he said, licking his lips. “About what happened in the dungeon.”

“A lot happened in the dungeon,” Andrew said. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

Neil smirked, turning to face Andrew properly. Andrew held his gaze for a long second before his eyes flickered downwards almost imperceptibly. Neil’s grin widened and he brushed his nose against Andrew’s. “Was that a one-time thing?” he murmured. “Or can I do it again?”

“Shut up,” Andrew said.

“Make me.”

Andrew curled his hand over Neil’s neck and his eyes slipped closed at the first press of lips. Andrew kissed him deeply, thoroughly, until he couldn’t feel the chill of the mists or the night anymore.

Their lips broke apart, breathing hard. “Still yes?” Andrew asked.

Neil smiled and the mists swirled around them, hiding them from everyone but each other. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come yell at me over at [writingpuddle](https://writingpuddle.tumblr.com/)
> 
> <3<3<3


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